I I fpr tie fn^eiing *f t ColUgt ta-i^ Ce&rfiy"
« iLiiiBi^^iEr «

0

BantMaMMnaw^wa

?UA-4^^^^^-^

Cen Cpocjs of C|)urct) flistor^
(EQiteD bp
Tol IIL

Copyright, 1896,
By The Christian Literature Company.

V'3

CONTENTS.

Preface

CHAP. I. — The Christology of the New Testament. —
Qualification for Interpreting Christ. — Christ as Ethical and
Religious Ideal. — Christ more than an Ideal of Humanity. —
Relation of Christ to Old Testament. — The Primitive Gos
pel. — Christ's Authority. — The Divine and the Human in
Christ. — Divinely Human and Humanly Divine. — The Law
and the Gospel. — Truth is Polar.— Duality of Our Lord's
Person. — The Organic Age of Christianity  I
CHAP. II. — The Natural Basis of a Scriptural and
Catholic Christology. — Harmony of the Early Fathers.
— Incarnation and Generation. — Human Knowledge of God.
— Truth and Reason. — Incarnation and Atonement Neces
sary. — Meaning of Inspiration. — Particular and Universal
Truth.— The Increment of Truth.— The Church and the
Council. — Authority and Experience  27
CHAP. III. — Ebionism and Docetism. — Jewish and Gentile
Christians. — The Mission of Judaism. — Heathenism, Juda
ism, Christianity. — Ebionism. — Artemon and Paul of Samo-
sata. — Samosatenisra and Arianism. — Dualism. — Gnosti
cism. — Docetism. — ApoUinarianism and Eutychianism . . . . 48
CHAP. IV.— Sabellianism and the Beginning of the
Trinitarian Discussion. — Patripassian Monarchianism.
— The Immanence of God. — Relation of God and the
World. — The Truth of the Trinity.— Piety versus Specula
tion. — Primitive Thought of the Trinity.— Primitive
Thought of the Logos. — Nature and the Supernatural.—
Absoluteness of Our Lord's Humanity. — Christian Pan
theism  69
CHAP. V. — The Origin and Rise of Arianism. — Theologi
cal Motive of Arianism. — Need of an Exact Terminology. —

vi Contents.

Outbreak of the Heresy. — Tenets of Arianism. — Denies both
Godhead and Manhood. — The Catholic Doctrine. — Logos
and Son. — Constantine the Great.— Sincerity of his Policy.
— Gradual Approach to Christianity. — His zeal for Unity
and Uniformity.— Failure of Constantine's Policy  90
CHAP. VI. — The Council of Nic^a. — Note of Ecumenicity.
— The Emperor and the Council. — The Arians in the Coun
cil. — Conservatives in the Council. — Athanasius and the
Catholics. — Arius and Athanasius. — The Creed of Nicaea. —
Necessity of Definitions. — The Arguments of Athanasius. —
Result of the Council  1 14
CHAP. VII.— Arianism after the Council of Nic/«a. —
Testimony Prior to Reflection. — Doubt and Reaction. —
Action of the Different Parties. — The Conservatives. — Objec
tions to the " Homociusion." — Force of the " Homoousion."
— Meaning of "Substance." — Policy of the Arians. — At
tempt to Destroy Athanasius. — Athanasius in Exile. — Vio
lence of Constantius. — ^Julian, Jovian, and Valens. — Disin
tegration of Arianism. — Triuraph of Nicenism  134
CHAP. VIII. — The First General Council of Constanti
nople. — Continuation of Nicene Theology. — Meaning of
"Hypostasis" or "Person." — Review of Trinitarian
Thought. — Distinctions within the Godhead. — Growth of
a Religious Philosophy. — Lights and Shadows of the Pe
riod. — Faithfulness of the Common People. — The Creed of
Constantinople. — Practical Legislation  162
CHAP. IX. — Apollinarianism. — Opening of Christological
Discussion. — The End of the Incarnation. — The Eternal
Humanity of the Son.— Christ the Realization of Humanity.
— Significance of Redemption. — Christ's Humanity Ours. —
Opposition to Nestorianism. — Tendency to Monophysitism.
— ^The Humanity not yet Defined. — Christianity more than
a Revelation  180
CHAP. X.— Nestorianism.— The School of Antioch.— Theo
dore of Mopsuestia. — Our Lord's Dual Personality. — A
Gnomic Unity. — St. John Chrysostom. — Nestorius. — The
Counter-school of Alexandria. — Opposite Points of View. —
St. Cyril of Alexandria. — Attitude of the Roman Bishop. . . 201
CHAP. XI. — The Council OF Ephesus.— Conservative Temper
of Antioch. — Division in the Council. — Movement toward
Reconciliation. — Obstacles to Reconciliation. — Net Result of

Contents. vii

the Council. — Doctrine of the "One Incarnate Nature." —
Alexandrian Christology Defective. — Character of Cyril. —
Renewal of the Issue  223
CHAP. XII. — Eutychianis.m and the Council of Chalce-
DON. — Character and Views of Eutyches. — The "Robber
Synod. "^ — Leo's Letter to Flavian. — The Synod Sustained by
the Emperor. — Council of Chalcedon. — The Chalcedonian
Decrees. — The Chalcedonian Symbol. — Criticism of the
Tome. — Its Insufficiency. — Defects of Leo's Christology. —
Political Schemes of Leo. — Primacy of Rome  242
CHAP.- XIIL— The Monophysites and the Second Coun
cil OF Constantinople. — Revolt against Decrees of
Chalcedon. — Monophysite Propaganda. — Justinian as Me
diator. — Edict of the Three Chapters. — The Fifth General
Council. — Principal of Monophysitism. — The Scientific Dif
ficulty. — The Religious Difficulty  267
CHAP. XIV. — ^The Monothelites and the Third Coun
cil OF Constantinople. — One Will or Two? — Maximus
Confessor. — Sequence of Events. — Sergius of Constanti
nople. — Honorius Originator of Monothelitism. — Excuse
for the Monothelitic Revolt. — The Sixth General Council.—
John of Damascus  284
CHAP. XV. — Adoptionism. — Meaning of Adoptionism. —
Nature of Our Lord's " Sonship." — Human Sonship by
Nature and by Grace. — Appeal to Scripture. — Sonship and
the Resurrection. — Error of Adoptionism. — Christ Uni
versal Humanity. — God the Essence of Our Personality. —
Fate of Adoptionism  301
CHAP. XVI. — The Christological Goal. — Christ Truer
than Our Science of Him. — The Inductive Method. — Christ
the Way to God. — The Proper Deity of the Human Jesus.
— The Logos the True Personahty of Men. — The Kenosis.
— The Incarnation Spiritual not Physical. — Theory of Self-
depotentiation. — Theory of Progressive Incarnation. —
Soteriology Dependent on Christology. — The Sum of
Spiritual Science  320

PREFACE.
HE present volume does not profess to be
properly a history. In so far as it is his
torical it is neither critical nor original.
It deals with a well-known course of
events the story of which it was neces
sary to repeat, but only with the ulterior purpose of
tracing the evolution of a process of thought. It is
properly an historical study of the growth and forma
tion of the catholic doctrine of the person of Jesus
Christ, — that is to say of that personal union of the
divine and human in our Lord which makes him the
supreme object of our spiritual and religious interest.
It has not been thought best therefore to prefix a
critical historical apparatus, which as a matter of fact
has not been used. References to sources of infor
mation are superfluous in this well-worn period, and
those who desire such can easily find them elsewhere.
As to the proper subject-matter it is hoped that
the necessary indebtedness of any work of historical
Christology to the great classic of Dr. Dorner has
not in this volume been anywhere disguised. But
as the author's obligation has been probably even
more through a long general familiarity with that
high authority than from immediate use of it, it is
difficult for him to measure its exact extent.

X Preface.
The aim of the book then is distinctly Christologi
cal, and it may be well to indicate in advance some
thing of its point of view. If Jesus Christ is what
the church believes him to be, he is and will always
be very much more in himself than our science of
him. Christology will therefore never be complete ;
but it is quite complete enough to convince us that
there is a truth in it of which while it is greater than
our knowledge we may yet know more and more.
No human mind can grasp the unity or organic whole
of nature,- yet science knows that nature is such a
whole and that it can forever approximate to it. So
the church knows that Jesus Christ stands to us for
a fact of God in nature and in humanity of which it
may know the truth although it can forever only ap
proximate the whole truth. There is no question to
it about Christ, the only question is of our Chris
tology, — to what extent our science truly represents
and expresses him.
There is everywhere a manifest revival of Chris
tological interest and discussion, and there are signs
of a still deeper renewal of Christological thought
and science. A religious activity more earnest as
well as more varied and conflicting than the world
has known for a long time presses upon us with ques
tions which demand both historical and scientific
treatment. Especially is there serious and long
standing confusion with regard to the union and
relation of the divine and human natures and func
tions in the person of our Lord. Partial, defective
views of his human activities, knowledge and power,
— a higher or psychical Docetism, — characterize our

Preface. xi
current theology. If we are to study these questions
anew we must begin by going back to the past;
but we must not expect to find a completed and
satisfactory solution of them in past thought, because
the mind of Christendom has not yet fully thought
them out. We must accept the genuine results of a
former science, but we have something of our own
to add to those results, as each succeeding age will
have something to add to ours.
W. P. Du BOSE.
University of the South,
June iS, 1896.

CHAPTER I.
THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
STUDY of the period of the great coun
cils must be chiefly a study of the great
fact or truth to the understanding and in
terpreting of which the mind and life of
the period was devoted. Its interest must
centre in the task that was undertaken and in the
results that were attained. Anything else, such as
the personality of the actors, the picturesqueness of
the situations, the dramatic movement and effect of
the incidents and events, must be kept strictly sub
ordinate and secondary to the absorbing interest and
importance of the truth involved. For this truth, if
it be what it claims to be, holds in it the life and the
destiny of mankind.
The question at issue was, primarily, simply that
of the person of Jesus Christ. But because Jesus
Christ is at once the most divine and the most human
fact and factor in the history and experience of our
race, the problem of his person became at once the
impulse and starting-point of an entire science of
God, of man, and of the essential and final relation
between God and man.
If the subject-matter upon which the councils were

The Ecumenical Councils.

engaged were only a matter of human speculation, if
the person of Jesus Christ, human and divine, were
a creation of the ethical and religious idealizing fac
ulty of humanity, the period would still possess, in
many ways, a very real interest for us ; but it would
be an interest so infinitely below that by which the
age believed itself to be actuated that in comparison
it dwindles into nothing. The thought and life of the
time felt itself engaged not in evolving dreams and
speculations of its own but in striving to receive and
interpret a truth which was true before, above, and
wholly independently of it. And in recalling now
its interest, its labors, and its attainments, we must
remember that the subject-matter of all these pre
ceded them, and was in itself all and very much
more than all that they were able to see or reveal of
it. It is necessary therefore that we should not
enter upon the labors of our period without first con
templating the fact which it felt itself called to inter
pret, and tracing down to it the interpretation that
had gone before.
It were perhaps to be wished that we could go
back behind all records or impressions upon others
of the person of Jesus Christ, and form from himself
a judgment of him for ourselves. The effort is con
stantly being made to do something like this, and
perhaps not wholly without results. What was he
who produced not this or that particular impression
but the resultant of actual and permanent impressions
which he has made upon- the world? But even if we
could make for ourselves such a point of view, the
criticism which should be able to judge of Jesus

Qualification for Interpreting Christ. 3
when thus seen, must combine in itself all the quali
fications necessary for seeing and understanding all
that he really was. There is a possibility of that
prepossession or prejudice which disqualifies for see
ing the truth, not from one side only, but from the
other no less. Supposing that Jesus were a personal
manifestation or revelation of God, visible as such,
and intended to be visible in the sphere not of the
natural but of the spiritual, then this divine in him,
if it was to be seen and heard and touched and han
dled, as St. John said it was, manifestly could not be
so by the organs of sense but only by some faculty
of spiritual perception or apprehension. To say that
we have no such faculty, and that either there is no
such divine to be apprehended or that the divine
cannot be so apprehended by us, is to come to the
inquiry with a prepossession which disqualifies for
seeing the divine in Jesus if it is there. No mere
natural science, no matter how complete, can ever
demonstrate that it is impossible there may be a
personal God, or that he may manifest himself in
the measure of their developed capacities to personal
spirits, along lines other than those of the senses and
by methods different from those of natural observa
tion and experience. Christianity holds that it car
ries with it proofs and evidences of itself which are
sufficient for itself, and which in no wise come into
conflict with any science save that which carries in
it the prepossession that such a manifestation of the
divine in the human is impossible. It cannot be de
nied that, if there be in Jesus Christ such a divine
as the church holds there is, it must appeal for recog-

The Ecumenical Councils.

nition to such a divine in us, or organ of the divine,
as — not contradicting nature, but on the contrary
completing and transfiguring it — yet lies outside of
any science of nature which on principle limits itself
to the information of the senses. If therefore such
a science ignores the existence, that is no proof of
the non-existence, of such a divine in our Lord and
in ourselves. The proof of it must in the very nature
of it lie in criteria which are extrascientific, and to
such we make our appeal, trusting that the definite
ness and certainty of the response will testify to its
truth. It will be seen that the validity and the value of
such reflections will depend upon the success with
which we apply to the question of the person of our
Lord such not merely natural but spiritual criteria
and tests as we maintain have more or less both impli
citly and explicitly been applied to it and have with
more or less completeness determined and settled it.
In reviewing the question of the person of Christ,
we too will endeavor to get behind the records and
see him as he must have been in himself.
The actual or historical Jesus of Nazareth, in view
of what he has become in the world, has never been
seriously appraised lower than as the one who has in
its history best realized in himself the ethical and
spiritual ideal of human nature, life, and destiny.
He is not less but more human than others, by how
much more than others he has sounded all the depths
and heights of humanity, and brought to actuality in
himself all that is potential but incomplete in others.
The actual Jesus was indeed the most human of

Christ as Ethical and Religious Ideal. 5
men ; and we get farther and farther away from him,
as well as from any real and saving hold upon the
divine realized in him, the farther we get in any
direction from the reality of his humanity.
In the first place, the moral ideal which the world
has recognized in Jesus Christ it has found primarily
not in his teaching but in himself. And that ideal is
not different in him from what it is in others except
in degree. In even the heathen world, Zeno and
Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius were at work upon a
practical theory of life and conduct not different in
principle or kind from his. And the moral maxims
of our Lord were not a revelation, or ought not to
have been such, to those who had been trained for
centuries under the law which he came not to destroy
but to fulfil. The principle of the cross itself was not
a novelty. It had its truth for him only as it has,
and has always had, its truth for ah. If he has made
it the necessary and universal and everlasting sym
bol of all highest human motive and action, it is only
because in itself and everywhere self-sacrificing love
is the sole highest motive and action, not only for
human but for all possible spiritual and free beings,
including God himself. And as the actual Jesus had
no other moraHty than that of men, so he attained its
heights by no other path than theirs. If he became
the perfect man, he was made perfect by the things
he suffered. He was tempted in all points like as we
are, and his endurance, his courage, his faith, his vic
tory, his peace and joy in overcoming, have nothing
in them that we cannot know and understand.
If we see in Jesus not merely the ethical but

The Ecum,enical Councils.

the religious ideal of humanity, just as little was his
religion as his morality essentially different from
that of all men. It was nothing more nor less than
the religion of a perfect faith, a perfect hope, and a
perfect love toward God and toward man. All
that was different from others was that in him it was
perfect in all these. And not only was his faith ours,
but it was a faith which had fought and conquered
our doubts, difficulties, and fears; it had known the
" conflict with despair," and had overcome through
the laying hold upon him who alone was able to save
him as weh as us. There is no spiritual aspiration
in any religion of any race, no feeling anywhere after
God if haply it might find him, that has not in it the
essential principle of the perfect religion of him who
has felt in himself all human want and aspiration, and
found in God all human satisfaction and fulfilment.
In Jesus Christ religion and morality are not two
things but one. It is the nature of man to fulfil
himself not by conformity to abstract laws but by
union with living persons. In our earthly relations
it is not the father's authority and law enforced and
obeyed, but his personal spirit communicated and re
ceived, that informs and shapes the character and per
sonality of the son. And in the larger home and
life of our universal and eternal relationships it is
not obedience to natural or divine laws that perfects
us, but the personal Spirit of God filling us and
fulfilling himself in us, and so enabling us to fulfil
ourselves in him. Not by works of the law, but by
the Spirit that works through a holy faith, love and
obedience wrought in us, are we saved.

Christ more than an Ideal of Humanity. 7
But there is nothing more certain than that what
ever was the human ethical or religious character
attained and manifested by our Lord, it is not to that
that we can attribute the immediate origin or the
permanent success of Christianity as a gospel, or
rather as the gospel ; for from its first proclamation
it never called or considered itself anything less than
this. It was just its unqualified and unhesitating
claim to absoluteness and universahty as such that
gave it its indestructible vitality and success. If it
had faltered for one moment in the completeness of
its claim, and consented to be an ethical system, a
philosophy, or even a religion, it would never have
become what it is. It was necessary that it should
be everything or nothing. And all this needs some
thing more to account for it than the personal virtue
or piety of even a Jesus of Nazareth. No matter how
truly and perfectly he thought and taught and Hved,
it is impossible to find in that anything to make his
life and person a gospel to the world in the sense in
which it claimed to be, and actually became, such.
As a matter of fact it was not the perfection
merely of our Lord's teaching or character that was
the primitive gospel. Christianity came with a burst
of joy and gladness and hope and power, all of
which betokened that something had come to pass
which no saint or sage could have accomphshed.
What it was, was no less than this : that Jesus Christ
had abolished sin and death, and that in him was to
be preached to aU the world the remission of sin and
resurrection from death. Such a gospel, in the nature
of it, could not be from man, but only of God ; and

8 The Ecumenical Councils.
that nothing less than this could have been its origi
nal proclamation is proof that there must have been
in Jesus the claim of something higher than truth in
his teaching, or holiness in his life. What this some
thing higher was wiU only gradually appear, but it
may be seen already that it must consist in some
unique relation as weh to God as to man, in conse
quence of which we are able to recognize in him not
only a work of God wrought in man, but — potentially
at least and virtually, if not yet actuaUy — an entirely
new relation of all men to God. In other words,
what is involved in the claim of the gospel from the
beginning, and what makes it the gospel, is that in
the person of Jesus Christ there is manifested the
essential truth, and the whole truth, of God to man
and man to God. The one aspect requires his God
head, and the other his manhood — both in a sense
and to an extent which it has been, and will be for
ever, the occupation and the joy of the church to
endeavor to receive and to define. This much, and
no less, we claim for the Christ of whom Christianity
is the product and the expression. We may have
no direct means now of judging him, but we can
judge it, and from only such a source can have come
such a stream.
When we pass from such a priori considerations of
the person of our Lord to the impressions actually
produced by him and the records that remain of him,
it may be well to dwell for a moment upon the part
which the Old Testament writings played in prede
termining these impressions and giving form to their
expression. Christianity is quite able and ready to

Relatio?i of Christ to Old Testament. 9
rest its claims upon itself, and its truth is not neces
sarily bound up with that of any antecedent history
or historical records. But it is a part of its claim to
truth in the natural as well as in the spiritual order,
that it came not without preparation throughout all
the previous course of the world. Indeed, if Chris
tianity is the truest, it must also be the most natural
thing in the world, and only truest because most
natural. Its claim is not to be a spiritual instead of
a natural, but a spiritual which is the truth and the
fulfilment of the natural order. " There is a spiritual,
and there is a natural. Howbeit that is not first which
is spiritual, but that which is natural ; and afterward
that which is spiritual." Each in its order, and the
higher not the contradiction and destruction, but the
realization and completion, of the lower : " I am not
come to destroy, but to fulfil." The natural creation
itself has passed through the successive stages or
orders of the mineral, the vegetable, the animal, and
the human. And human history, in entering into
personal relation and union with the personal divine,
and so becoming spiritual, in contradistinction from
its merely immanent relarion to God in nature, is not
thereby contradicring either nature or its own nature,
but only fulfilHng both. So in reality the truth of
Christianity is not only true for all time to come, but
it was true in all rime before. It is part, and highest
part, of the truth not only of the worid but of the
universe. It makes no difference for our present pur
pose what we think of the Bible, or how we define
prophecy. After all that has been or can be said,
the fact remains that the Old Testament history did

IO The Ecumenical Councils i
prepare the way for Christ and the gospel. The New
Testament was latent in the Old, and the Old became
patent in the New. All that was essential was that the
preparation should prepare and that the fulfilment
should fulfil. Both did so; the end was attained;
we may let the rest go. But to us it is of no little
interest and profit to possess and to study the rec
ords of how, by the natural method of a progressive
spiritual evolution, the needs and wants, the hopes
and expectations, were formed and trained in the old
order under the law, that were to be filled and
satisfied in the new under the gospel ; just as we
recognize now in every true natural human life, not
a negation or contradiction of the spiritual, but a
thousand incompletenesses, wants, dissatisfactions, and
aspirations, which will find their satisfaction only in
the spiritual. Divine redemption from sin and death
was as much the hope and promise of the first
as it was the realization of the final dispensation.
And we may add that it is as much the funda
mental need and longing of the truly natural as it
is the fulfilment and satisfaction of the truly spirit
ual man. The Old Testament was the divine prep
aration of the natural for the spiritual, and it is
nothing against the divine origin and character of
Christianity that only Jews, with heads and hearts
full of Messianic ideas and hopes, were prepared first
to recognize the Christ and welcome the gospel.
When we come to the question of what were the
earliest and most authentic records of our Lord which
have come down to us, what was the first gospel or
written description of his person and work, here again.

The Primitive Gospel. 1 1

while the question can never be answered to the
satisfaction of all the Hterary and critical interests
involved in it, quite enough may be well known for
our present purpose. It is impossible to reduce the
primitive gospel to any minimum of what is contained
in our synoptic gospels which will not include all that
is sufficient to make that minimum the gospel. And
to call anything the primitive gospel which did not
contain in it implicitly and in germ all that has en
titled the later gospel to be called a gospel at ah is
an historical contradiction. To say that the sum of
what was in our Lord, and in the first impressions
that he made upon his foUowers, and in their first
records of him, was that he was a good man and a
great teacher, through whom the world learned
more clearly than before what virtue and godliness
are, is simply to disconnect the origin of Christianity,
and Christianity itself, from Christ and his original
disciples and the original documents. That was not
the Christianity that burst upon the world with an
initial force and truth which was the secret of its final
and permanent success. That Christianity included
in it indeed the conviction of the human spiritual
and moral perfection of Jesus; but it saw in that
human virtue and godHness nothing less than man's
atonement with God, redemption from sin, and resur
rection from death. This divine and universal sig
nificance of himself, and of what he-was and accom
plished as a man, was a part and an inseparable part
of the consciousness of Jesus himself. It is not only
that St. John says, " He was manifested to take away
sins ; and in him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in him

12 The Ecumenical Councils.
sinneth not." It is not only that St. Paul says every
where that in him God has abohshed sin, and with it
death. It is not only that the apostles went out at
the very first to preach in him remission of sin and -
resurrection from death. It is not only that baptism
into him meant all this or meant nothing at all. It is
that you cannot separate from the personal conscious
ness of Jesus Christ himself the sense and the know
ledge that he was come to be something from God to
the world, which the church after him might insuffi
ciently receive and understand, but can never over
estimate or exaggerate. Any most primitive repre
sentation of Jesus includes in it, beyond the evidences
of his sweet reasonableness and humanness, an ele
ment of power and authority to which there is no
natural limit, and which must be recognized in its full
extent by one who would wholly know him. The
developed Gospel of St. John carries this e^ovaia to the
point of quickening the dead, conferring the divine
life, arid being the final Judge and Saviour of men.
St. Paul regards him as the second Adam in whom
humanity comes to spiritual or divine life, as in the
first Adam it came to earthly and natural life. The
Epistle to the Hebrews sees in him the high priest in
whom humanity has through death consummated its
relation to God and entered within the veil. The
synoptics themselves bring their story to the point at
which all power is given to him in heaven and earth,
and all the nations of the earth are to be baptized
into his name. But if we go back behind all these
to the indisputable spiritual attitude and claim of
Jesus, we too shall find aU that was subsequently

Christ's Authority. 13
developed out of it already contained in it. When
he taught it was with the authority of the law itself,
and not merely of one under the law. He himself
indeed humanly obeyed and fulfilled the law, but he
did it in a way to appear more the law fulfilling itself
in a human obedience than a merely human obedience
fulfilling the law. The church sees in him, indeed,
both the divine law and the human obedience — the
divine will incarnate in human life ; and our Lord's
own attitude sustains both. He is the law which he
obeys. When we turn from the authority of his teaching
to that of his working, there is a point of view from
which it almost seems a lowering of our Lord's spir
itual and moral attitude that he should have descended
to work what are called " miracles." Was he not
higher as himself embodying the law — the eternal na
ture and truth of things — than as seemingly violating
its sanctity and consistency? But, without attempt
ing at this time an explanation, how plain it is that our
Lord himself regarded the miracles as accidental and
subordinate to the real and permanent purpose of his
mission and ministry ! In the first place, the works
of healing are with him always not so much acts of
power as of compassion ; the explanation given of
them is that " himself bore our sorrows and carried
our griefs." And in the second place the real object
of his compassion is conspicuously not the fruit of
suffering in the body, but the root of sin in the soul.
He says to the sick of the palsy, " Son, thy sins be
forgiven thee." The bodily healings were with him
but as parables or signs of that spiritual heaHng which

14 The Ecumenical Councils.
was to be his real and permanent work in the world.
They were wrought that through them we might
"know that the Son of man hath power on earth to
forgive and to heal sin." The bhnd saw, the deaf
heard, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the
dead arose, all as illustrations of a redemption, a res
urrection, which is preached to every human being in
him. All this he wrought, indeed, as Son of man. He
preaches and imparts nothing to us as men which he
was not himself as man. But he was the man he was,
and we shall be the men we shall be in him, because
it was God who was incarnate in him in order that
through him he may become incarnate in us. There
is no primitive gospel according to which Jesus Christ
is himself personaUy dead. In all he is aHve, to be
himself personaUy present in every man — the per
sonal principle in him of his own communicated hoH-
ness and his own imparted life.
What theory of the nature and of the person of
Jesus Christ is necessarily involved in such an origi
nal conception of the effects produced by him, and
the abiding and influential relations borne by him to
the whole human race, may not yet be present in
the minds or apparent in the testimony of the first
evangeUsts. But there is one remarkable assertion
that may certainly be ventured upon without fear of
controversy. If we take our gospels as they stand,
it cannot be denied that the synoptics on one side
and St. John on the other regard the person of our
Lord from opposite points of view. The one see him
primarily as human, and the other sees him as divine ;
and the human of the former is as thoroughgoing and

The Divine and the Human in Christ. 1 5
complete as the divine of the latter ; the Jesus of the
synoptics is as simply, naturally, tragically human as
the incarnate Word of St. John is divine. But there
is absolutely nothing in the synoptical representation
of the human character and consciousness of Jesus
which unfits it or renders it inadequate for St. John's
conception of it as a divine incarnation ; and equally
there is nothing in St. John's representation of an in
carnation of the eternal Word in the person of Jesus
which contradicts or impairs the reality or the com
pleteness of his humanity as portrayed by the synop
tics. On the contrary, the humanity is the wholly
adequate and congruous expression and manifesta
tion of the divinity, and the divinity is the necessary
and the only explanation and account of the human
ity. The divinity of Jesus Christ is not revealed
outside of but in and by his humanity. The very
truth and design of the incarnation is the realiza
tion and revelation of God in man ; and the Godhead
is manifest not in the non-naturalness but in the
higher and truer naturalness of the manhood. God
incarnate, that is to say. Godhead in manhood, would
not and could not assume any other form than that
of the divinely human and humanly divine personality
and personal life of Jesus Christ. Any other would
have been either less human or less divine, and there
fore less both. The constant disposition and effort
to make our Lord more divine by making him less
human tends only to reduce the incarnation to a
semblance and an unreality. On the other hand,
when it is attempted to make him less divine by
making him more human, we need not fear, but may

1 6 The Ecum,enical Councils,
even welcome, the result of the experiment. When
even with hostUe intent criticism emphasizes the very
and entire humanness of the Jesus of the synoptics,
not merely of his body and its natural affections but
also of his mind and consciousness, and of his wUl and
character and life — when it represents his virtue as
consisting, like ours, of a free human will and a sweet
human reasonableness, and even his godHness as
being, like ours, the gift to him of the divine grace
through his human faith — let us remember that these
things cannot be too much emphasized, that by how
much he lacked any part of them he fell short of
being a man, and his humanity of being a real and a
complete incarnation. Jesus Christ wholly revealed
God in that he was and not otherwise than as he
was the divine revelation of the whole nature, life,
and destiny of man. As such he is the divine and
the whole, as weU of every man as of all humanity.
And all this is not only expressed explicitly in the
developed doctrinal or theological system of St. Paul '
or St. John ; it is contained implicitly in the con
stitution of his own divine-human personahty, as in
the impression he made upon others and in the earUest
records others have left of him.
The certain and indisputable first recorded im
pression of Jesus Christ was thus that of one who
indeed was man, but such a man as that humanity
was become in him a new thing ; and new, not in the
sense of ceasing to be itself or human but in the
sense of now for the first time truly becoming itself
or divine. For it was just the truth of humanity that
it was constituted for and so predestined to what

Divinely Human and Humanly Divine. 1 7
St. Paul afterward called vioOeaia, or divine sonship.
That is to say, it was its nature to be taken into
participation with the divine nature and life ; it was
made for God, and could complete itself or be com
pleted only in personal feUowship of nature and life
with the personal God. If the first religious con
sciousness saw in Jesus rather a manhood which real
izes and attains itself in the Godhead, while the later
is disposed to reverse the process, and see in him God
who fulfils himself in humanity, and so in individual
men, this is but as it should be. The truth of either
side does not contradict that of the other, but on
the contrary the impairing of either truth impairs
the other. The fact of the case was that the human
of the earlier consciousness was such as not merely to
truly and adequately embody and express the divine
of the later, but to be only by it truly and adequately
explained and accounted for. Out of this inevitably
arose the question. Was this a divine become human
or a human become divine? And if the answer was,
as it must be, that it was both, then foUows the fur
ther question. Which of the two was first and cause
of the other? The decision of the church was that
in Jesus Christ man was become divine because God
was become man. If in reaching this decision there
was a wavering or a temporary lingering on the way,
and if even within the New Testament Scriptures
there can be found at any point evidence of such
hairing, there is nothing in this inconsistent with the
character either of the Scriptures or of the truth.
The gospel of Anrioch and that of Jerusalem, to
the GentUes and to the Jews, of St. Paul and of the

1 8 The Ecumenical Councils.

original apostles, have been contrasted and opposed,
even to the point of making them two gospels. St.
Paul does indeed say " my gospel," and that as
against a narrower and exclusive gospel which would
place or magnify barriers in the way of the universal
extension of the free gift and impartation of God to
humanity in Jesus Christ. There was in the nature
of things an inevitable strain and conflict involved
in the transition from the exclusiveness of Judaism to
the universahty of Christianity. To wipe out dis
tinctions and make Jew and Gentile one body in
Christ was a task of which it would be difficult to
exaggerate the practical and actual difficulties. We
may concede the existence through it of strained
relations among the apostles themselves. But the
strain was endured, and the catholic church embraced
in its one bosom both parties, without the sacrifice of
anything vital in the faith or practice of either. That
the controversy did not involve any distinctive or
essential point of Christianity itself, but turned upon
issues wholly outside of it, became clear enough as
soon as it was all over. Upon what constitutes the
gospel there is neither in Scripture nor in tradition
the slightest charge or suspicion of difference or
contradiction. The apostles from Jerusalem preached
a risen and living Christ, present by his Spirit in the
church, and taking men up into the grace and power
of his redemption from sin and his resurrection from
death. They were too much as yet taken up with
the fact and their experience of it to go on into any
rationale of their divine salvation. And, dealing with
Jews, the inevitable question did not come up with

The Law and the Gospel. 19
them of the relation of their new faith to their old
principles and habits of thought and life. Absorbed
in the former, the latter continued along with it with
out any thought on their part of incongruity or incon
sistency. Yet there is no question that Christianity,
while in one sense it fulfils and completes, in another
sense supplants and displaces Judaism by a distinct
change of principle. To St. Paul as apostle to the
Gentiles fell the painful task of cutting Christianity
loose from all trammels of Judaism and of exposing
theirirreconcilable difference and contrast. He resisted
to the death the claim for the continuance of the rite
of circumcision because he saw in it a principle of
legalism which he deemed it of the essence of Chris
tianity not merely to leave behind but to exchange
for a directly opposite principle. The other apostles
may very well not have so seen it or so clearly seen
it; and to the Jewish Christians generally his radical
and revolutionary attitude to the ancient law would
amply justify all that he suffered at their hands.
St. Paul did not suffer too much, nor did he at
tach too much consequence to the principle at stake,
since — although he alone at the time may have seen
it — the principle was indeed the essential and vital
one of Christianity, and to his sufferings for it we
are indebted for his thorough analysis and exposi
tion of it. The law and the gospel represent two
aspects or relations of human Hfe that are neither
more nor less mutually exclusive or contradictory
than the world and God or nature and grace. It
was necessary in human history as in human life
that each in its order should be developed into con-

20 The Ecumenical Councils.
sciousness, that they should then be contrasted and
opposed, and that finally they should be reconciled
and combined. The principle of the law is that man
cannot be fulfilled otherwise than by himself; the
principle of the gospel is that man is fulfilled only in
and through God. The question indeed does not
end there ; given that man cannot be free or complete
in himself alone but only in God, does he complete
himself in God or does God alone complete him ? At
every point the answer is that both sides are true.
It was the genius of Hebrew culture because it was
its divine mission to develop the principle of moral
obedience. Its contribution to the thought and life
of the world was its conception of personal, national,
human righteousness. Its God has been defined as
" the power, not ourselves, that makes for righteous
ness." Its dream and prophecy of the future was a new
heaven and a new earth wherein should be realized
its moral ideal of a universal righteousness. Doubt
less this is the first of truths for the free spirit. Kant
did not emphasize too strongly either the fact of the
moral law or the autonomy of the human wiU. Man
can only be himself by himself fulfilHng his law — and
his whole law. Righteousness is his sole end, his
only redemprion, completion and salvation ; and only
he can be or do his own righteousness, for righteous
ness is essentially a personal act or habit and cannot
in the nature of it be merely natural or impersonal
or passive. It has been well said that the truth of
the Old Testament is, No salvarion but righteous
ness ; of the New, No righteousness but Christ. If
the last and greatest of the prophets just before the

Truth is Polar. 21
coming of our Lord repeated the cry of the old dis
pensation, it was given to St. Paul after his coming,
at least most clearly and decisively of all, to utter the
voice of the new. It is only one who can see and
combine the truth expressed in opposites who can
understand that the declaration that man can only be
saved by his own obedience is not contradicted by
the other declaration that man cannot be saved by
his own obedience. We shall not understand all the
meaning of salvation in Christ until we have learned
the whole of two truths, each of which has opposite
sides which must equally and wholly be held. The
first is that Jesus Christ is equally God who by a
divine incarnation fulfils himself in man, and man
who by a human faith and obedience realizes himself
in God. The second is that Jesus Christ is equally
an objective human righteousness or self-realization
or salvation, presented to our faith and made ours by
the divine grace, and a subjective human righteous
ness appropriated, made our own, and wrought in us
through our own obedience. We have only to reflect
for a moment to see that if the divine becoming in us
is to be at the expense of our own becoming, if we
are to have God at the expense of losing instead of
truly finding and completing ourselves, the salvation
will not be that of Christ and Christianity.
St. Paul then no more than our Lord himself was
set for the destrucrion but rather for the true and only
fulfilHng of the law. But his mission was to stand
for righteousness or salvation not as it is through
obedience or the law but as it is not through these ;
not as we work it but as God has wrought it for us

2 2 The Ecumenical Councils.
and works it in us. Just as one might stand for the
divine in Christ and not the human and yet not deny
the human but if need be stand for it too, as it
might seem to some, against the divine ; so one might
be set for the denial of the possibiUty of righteous
ness through human obedience alone without deny
ing that a righteousness from God and by grace can
only exist for us and in us as a true and free human
obedience. It is as true in its place to say that God
alone without us cannot make us righteous as it is to
say that we ourselves without God cannot be right
eous. But St. Paul was standing for the second and
if to many he seems to contradict the first it is only
seeming. In reality he knows as much that the ma
terial cause and condition of our righteousness is
our own being righteous and doing righteously as
he knows that the efficient and producing cause of
our righteousness is the grace and power and new
creation of God in Christ working through our faith.
His so-called one-sidedness exists only for those who
do not know the whole of him and it contradicted
neither the other-sidedness of the apostles who were
before him nor the both-sidedness of the catholic
church which came after him.
When we pass on to the Christ and the Gospel ac
cording to St. John it is impossible to deny or ignore
the difference of point of view or representarion. If
acknowledging this and not venturing to account for
it we still affirm, underneath all the differences, the
identity of the person and work described with those
of the accounts of St. Paul, St. Peter and the synop-
rics, and with the actual person and work of Jesus

Duality of Our Lord's Person. 23
himself, it wiU of course seem daring and unjustifiable
to a merely natural criticism, but it is true neverthe
less. The Jesus of St. John is incontrovertibly the in
carnation of a divine person ; but it is never so at the
expense of his being just as truly and wholly and
consistently a human person. I need not add, save
for those who ignorantly or wilfully misunderstand,
that this does not mean that he is two persons but
one who if he is as truly divine as he is human is
also as truly human as he is divine. In St. John how
ever it is only the second that needs to be made
apparent. The Jesus, for example, of the fifth chap
ter, who feels himself one with the Father and not
only works the Father's work but as it were works
the Father's working (" My Father worketh and I
work," as though it were not only to one result but
even by one operation) ; who judges the divine judg
ment and saves with the divine salvation, yet claims
do to all this humanly and accounts for doing it not
on the ground of being divine but on the ground that,
being human, he is wholly surrendered to God and
does not oppose himself to God's being and wiUing
and working in him. He is what he is and does
what he does because he wholly seeks not himself
or his own will but only and whoUy the will of him
v/ho had sent him. It is as Son of man that he is
sole and supreme Saviour and Judge, a savor of Hfe
unto Hfe and of death unto death. His attitude to
his own miracles is the same as that in the synoptics.
They are aU merely figures of his one complete and
perfect work of raising humanity out of death and

24 The Ecumenical Councils.
quickening or regenerating it with the Ufe of God.
He is the way, the truth and the Ufe for men because
he, as representing and embodying humanity, has by
the one way for men — the way of self-sacrificing love
and obedience, the way of the cross — attained the
whole truth and lived the whole Ufe of humanity. In
consequence, power is his over all flesh to give eternal
life to those who believe in and receive and love him.
The above very general outline will serve to illus
trate and justify the conclusions which we wish to
make the starting-point of our further studies. When
we take the Christian Scriptures as a whole, leaving
aside all questions of criticism, the following points
become clearer and clearer to the Christian con
sciousness in proportion as it more and more enters
into and is more and more qualified to judge them.
There is no essential part of the New Testament
that is not instinct and vital with the primitive im
pulse and life of the Christianity of Jesus Christ.
All the parts are not the same but they are coor
dinate and supplementary parts of an organic whole
which has become the faith and the life of the cath
olic church. The conclusions that represent the
teaching of the New Testament writers as inconsis
tent and made up of different and contradictory im
pulses and direcrions of thought are drawn from in
complete assumprions of what the initial and essential
principle and fact of Chrisrianity is. Assume that
the actual Christ is not and cannot have b.een what
the church has received him to be, and all that flows
from him must become instantly and from the begin
ning confusion, self-contradiction and incomprehensi-

The Organic Age of Christianity. 25
bUity. Assume him to be what the church beUeves
him, and the Scriptures, the thought and life of the
church, the faith and formative principle of Christen
dom, become one, harmonious and comprehensible.
The first movement, manifestation and self-em
bodiment of Christianity, as destined to be not merely
an idea but a realization and an institution in the
world, was certainly its most living, plastic and cre
ative act. When this stage was at an end it was
found to have formed for itself an outward expres
sion of worship and Ufe, an organization for discipline
and government, and a body of sacred books that
embodied its teaching. Confining ourselves to the
latter we might say that the action of the church in
accepting a canon of Scripture need not have been
more than the instinctive and practical wisdom of
receiving as highest, truest and best Christianity's
own first, Uving and creative expression of itself, and
making this the norm and measure of all subsequent
self-expressions of it. It is self-evident to the mind
that takes it in as a whole that the New Testament
is a single movement of spiritual and Christian thought
and life and that it is complete and sufficient in itself.
It is equally certain that neither the succeeding nor
any subsequent age had in it either the plastic capa
city or the creative power to take for itself a Uving
form such as Christianity easily, freely and naturaUy
assumed in its initiative stage. And therefore it was,
to say no more, an act of practical wisdom to accept
that first embodiment and expression of itself as in
principle at least and in substance final and irreform-
able. In this way actually the church did adopt its

26 The Ecumenical Councils.
primitive liturgical norm, its episcopal organization
and its canon of Scripture. And since then experi
ence has proved that neither in worship, in govern
ment nor in doctrine has the church ever well or
wisely tampered with its primitive constitution or
form. On the contrary experience ever brings it
back to these as certainly humanly best if not indeed
divinely ordered and appointed.
Returning then to the Scriptures as the source
and rule of the further thinking and defining of the
church's mind upon the essential doctrine of the per
son and work of Christ, what may we in recapitula
tion sum up as the essential elements of the prob
lem? We may say first that if Christianity is to
remain true to its own original claim upon the church
and to the church's original impression and accept
ance of it, it must continue to present in its Head and
in itself not only the ideal but the reality of a per
sonal presence and operation of God in humanity.
Christianity must be primarily and essentially a di
vine fact and a divine act. It can never be anything
less than an atonement of God with man and a re
demption and completion of man in God. And in
the second place since the Christ of the Scriptures
represents and fills man's part as well as God's in
the great act of the divine-human atonement ; since
as the great High Priest appointed for man in things
pertaining to God he is we to Godward as truly as
he is God to u sward ; therefore he must be reaUy
man and there must not be any more limitation in
his manhood than there is in his Godhead.

CHAPTER II.
THE NATURAL BASIS OF A SCRIPTURAL AND
CATHOLIC CHRISTOLOGY.
HE claim thus far made we may restate
as follows : the writings that passed into
the permanent acceptance of the church
as its canon of Scripture belong to a sin
gle and complete movement of thought
and life in which Christianity expressed its first and
whole impression and conception of the person and
work of Jesus Christ. Only then and there was such
an expression and record of the original and origi
nating facts of Christianity possible. No later age
could either make it or materially add to it. What
ever Christ had been or had done in himself, Christian
ity did not originate or enter into the world untU his
person and his work had passed into the mind, the
life and the experience of the first believers. When
the Scriptures were completed they had so passed
and were become the possession of the church. There
was much still and would be always for Christian
thought and science to occupy itself with in the
Chrisrian faith and life, but so far as the materials
were concerned for all this future occuparion, they
27

28 The Ecttmenical Councils.
were complete in the primitive experience as recorded
in the Scriptures ; or if they were not there was no
means or possibUity of future addition to them.
What the church had to do afterward as we shall
see — and it was an inevitable and necessary task —
was to form out of the materials in its possession a
common or catholic faith over against the incom
plete, variable and conflicting faiths of its individual
members. But it was more than two centuries be
fore the church was in condition or circumstance to
think and express itself again as a whole. In the
meantime we have only here and there individual
voices, speaking each for itself and yet testifying
by their agreement to the wide-spread and unbroken
certainty of the common truth and life. They of
course were not infallible ; some of them lived and
thought only in the light of the general tradition
before and without the guidance of an accepted Scrip
ture, while all as yet were without that of an author
itative catholic consensus or agreement. A complete
and all-sided faith or life is not promised or given to
any individual man, and no single man even with
the aid of the Scriptures holds such except as the
gift to him in whole or for the most part of the
common thought and knowledge of the church. The
very elevation and intensity of individual attention
and experience in one direction withdraws it from
other directions of quite equal truth and importance.
Only such a complex resultant of the operation of
many minds and lives as we have in the Scriptures
or in the church can combine the whole truth or ex
press the sum of Chrisrian experience. The earliest

Harmony of the Early Fathers. 29
fathers were separated in some respects further than
are we who have Scripture and catholic consent
from the primitive and formative impulse and life of
Christianity. We may expect to find in no one of
them therefore the whole developed round of truth
and life as it is in Christ. Yet on the other hand
it may be claimed that in no one of them do we not
find one at least or some of those truths in Christ
that are essential parts of the truth as it is whole
in him, and each of which is only true in the com
mon truth of all the others. And so at the close of
the second century Irenasus in Gaul, TertuUian in
Africa and Clement in Alexandria, representing the
Christian world of the time, are substantially and
sufficiently agreed upon the essential fact and doc
trine of the person and work of Jesus Christ. But
that from the first and always, even within the church,
there were not only partial and incomplete con
ceptions but also denials and contradictions of the
essential truth of Christ, it is needless to say. The
founder and the first teachers of Christianity fore
saw that it was not only inevitable but needful that
it should be so. Truth is only made known and
indeed only knows itself in conflict with error ; and
it is the most famihar fact in connection with the
actual growth and formation of catholic doctrine that
it was reached by the appHcarion on its largest his
torical scale of the principle of exclusion.
Before beginning however to trace the process by
which the church formed for itself a catholic mind
from the materials of truth committed to it — that is to
say, by which the truth of Scripture, consisting mainly

30 The Ecumenical Councils.
of facts, was converted into that of the church, com
posed largely also of doctrine and dogma — we must
first discuss a very large and important principle
that underUes the whole matter.
It is very evident that there is a double problem in
volved in the origin and appearance of Christianity
in the world — the problem namely not only of its di
vine giving but also of its human receiving. A divine
revelation or communication of any sort can only
be adequately made through an adequate human
understanding and acceptance of it. Granting a true
and complete revelation of God in word and work
through Jesus Christ, what is the ground of assur
ance of a true and complete appropriation and repre
sentation of that word and work in the Scriptures
and in the mind and Hfe of the church ? Both sides
of the problem are everywhere recognized and pre
sented with sufficient plainness in the New Testa
ment, where grace or divine communication is al
ways conditioned upon faith or human apprehension
and reception. The light could but shine in darkness
if the darkness comprehended it not. When St. Peter
made his famous confession of the person of the Lord
and was told, " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah,
for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee
but my Father which is in heaven,'' there is recog
nition of the fact that an objective divine revelation
of truth or life is dependent upon and of no avail
without a corresponding subjective human power of
apprehension and acceptance. Similarly when St.
Paul says, " But when it pleased God ... to reveal
his Son in me," he refers not to the objective self-

Incarnation and Generation. 31
revelation of God in Christ but to the divinely given
power in himself to recognize the truth revealed,
without which it would or could have had no signifi
cance or truth whatsoever for him. On a larger
scale, the birthday of the church is truly placed in
the New Testament not on Easter day when all the
conditions of its new life are objectively completed
in the resurrection of its Head but on Whitsunday,
when by the gift of the Holy Ghost the subjective
conditions are realized by which alone the risen life
could become its own.
The general principle is stated in the scriptural and
church doctrine that the incarnation as a whole and
in all its parts is an act of the divine Word by the
divine Spirit, the Logos by the Holy Ghost. In this
conjoint work, as has been elsewhere said, the Word
as always is the principle or agent of the objective
revelation, the Spirit that of the subjective human
appropriation. In the womb of the Virgin the Holy
Ghost is not the divine begetter nor the divine be
gotten but reveals his operation in the grace of the
human conception and child-bearing. The expres
sion "conceived by the Holy Ghost" represents the
Holy Ghost as mother not of the act by which the
Word became flesh but of the preparation and abil
ity of the flesh to be assumed by the Word. The
function of the Word appears in the divine imparta
tion, that of the Spirit in the human susceptibility
and reception. By the Word God begets, by the
Spirit humanity conceives and bears; through both
God is incarnated and humanity is regenerated and
redeemed.

32 The Ecumenical Councils.
This may all be considered the more or less figur
ative or symbolical language of the Scriptures and
the church ; but attach what meaning or importance
we may to the facts or to their expressions, there is
a truth that lies behind them to which in some form
or other we must do justice. If Christianity is some
thing more than a mere humanly devised theory of
conduct or humanly conceived dream of religion, if
God is indeed in it and between him and us there is
something really given and received, then we must
form to ourselves some mode of conceiving both the
giving and the receiving. The former we call a rev
elation, the self-manifestation and self-communica
tion of God to men, objectively and completely given
in the divine-human person and life of Jesus Christ.
The latter appears in Christian thought under several
different forms, all of which however are but kinds
or degrees of one and the same thing.
The highest of these forms is what has been desig
nated inspiration, a term applied exclusively to that
assumed true apprehension, and infallible record of
Christian revelation which we have in the Scriptures.
The next higher form of human reception of divine
truth in Jesus Christ is to be found in church au
thority, which claims for itself the right to inter
pret the Scriptures and to give, as in the creeds, a
cathoUc doctrine which is above any private inter
pretation of individual Christians. Lower in a sense
than either of these and yet the basis and condition
of them both is the claim of the individual human
soul to be able to say at all that it knows or can

Human Knowledge of God. 33
know God or the things that are freely given to it of
God in Jesus Christ.
Of course if it is impossible for the human spirit
to know God otherwise than as it conjectures his
existence and its own relation to him within the
course of nature; if there is demonstrably no inter
relation and communion between finite spirits and
the Father of spirits of a spiritual and personal char
acter, which is to us the essence of any real religion
— that ends the matter. If however there is for the
spiritual man a knowledge of spiritual things, such
knowledge, while on one side it must doubtless be
of God, on the other side must equally be of the
man himself. All knowledge must be equally of
the object and of the subject and of a relation or
correspondence between the two by virtue of which
the one somehow makes itself known and the other
somehow knows it. If God can make himself known
to us or in us it is only because there is such a cor
respondence between him and us by virtue of which
we can know him. However God in any way or
degree makes himself known to us, we may depend
upon it that it is through our own way of knowing
him ; and if it is in any sense supernatural it is only
in that in which the supernatural is the highest reach
and acrion of the natural. God's presence and op
eration in anything does not replace or displace the
thing but completes and fulfils it; and so through
any presence and operation of God in him man does
not cease to be but for the first time truly and com
pletely becomes himself. If therefore we know God

34 The Ecumenical Councils.

and what he has given us of himself in Jesus Christ
it is by virtue of some most natural faculty and cri
terion within ourselves as spiritual beings, or beings
constituted for such knowledge of God and of the
things of God. The spiritual man is judge of spirit
ual things because as they are for him so in some
real sense he is for them, and therefore as they
" find " him so he receives, measures and verifies
them. Aristotle defines that to be " rational " which
is so to the rational or wise man, making " the right
reason " the test or measure of what is rational as
conversely he makes the objectively and truly ra
tional the test of the right reason. And so St. Paul
says — and says in perfect consonance with our Lord's
own position — that that is spiritual truth which is so
to the spiritual man, as conversely the spiritual man
is he who understands spiritual truth. These two
are for each other and each is test and measure of
the other; only he who is of God can know what is
of God and he only is of God who knows the things
freely given him of God. It has been asserted and
truly that all ultimate truth, whether of the natural
or of the spiritual reason, is believed at last because
it is truth and not because it is proved. Truth and the
reason are mutually measures and tests of each other
and only that truly stands which truly unites them.
We might illustrate this position in many ways.
For example, science recognizes the fact that in hu
man thought and life there are certain ideas or senti
ments which " persist," and it admits this persistence
as an argument for their truth. Among these are
the ideas or sentiments of God, of immortality, of

Truth and Reason. 35
religious faith and worship. WiU these continue to
persist as long as human thought and life continue ?
It is perfectly rational to reply that that depends
upon whether or not they are true in themselves. If
they are not true they will certainly sooner or later
disappear out of that of which they are not integral
and essential parts. If they are true it is equally
certain that they will never disappear but will con
tinue to give no rest to the individual or to the race
until they have received fuller — and fullest — recog
nition and satisfaction. If there is spiritual truth for
the spiritual reason and a spiritual reason in us for
the truth we need have no doubt that these will fi
nally come together ; what God has made to be joined
together no man or men can forever keep asunder.
Now Christianity claims to be the fulness of divine
revelations and communications to man and the
completeness and limit of man's capacity of recep
tion from God. It proclaims Christ as on the one
side the sum of spiritual or divine things to be ap
prehended, and as on the other the perfect human
apprehension of these things. He perfectly repre
sents God in things pertaining to man as he perfectly
represents man in things pertaining to God and so
is the perfect expression of the perfect relation be
tween them. If this be so it follows that as Jesus
Christ is the Logos of God so is he the proper con
tent and revelation of the spiritual reason of man ;
and he is received and believed by the soul prima
rily perhaps for other reasons also but finaUy and per
manently because and only because he is the truth
and life of the soul.

36 The Ecumenical Councils.
Thus the proper proof of Jesus Christ is Jesus
Christ himself. It is for what he is and not for any
external proofs he may have given of himself or God
may have given of him that he is beUeved on and
will be believed on in the world. The same amount
of proof and ten times the same amount though it
were given by God himself to anything less true or
less vitally true in itself could not have produced
the same faith in us, because our faith goes out not
to the proof but to the truth of the thing proved.
Though Jesus Christ had fulfilled all prophecy and
wrought all miracles and given himself up to worse
than the cross and risen with a more startling and
convincing resurrection from the dead, all these things
would not in themselves have made Christianity a
thing for aU men in all time if there were not some
thing in itself for all men and all time, if he were not
indeed the way, the truth and the Ufe.
To illustrate this more in detail : it is not enough
that Christianity with its absolute and exclusive
claim should be true ; it must be at every point the
inevitable, only and ultimate truth. This of course
will not be apparent at first in the case of each
such truth; it only becomes so at last as the re
sult of a process by which the experience gradually
fits and adjusts itself to the truth and the truth
graduaUy approves and proves itself to the experi
ence; and so the two become one in a union from
which there is afterward no possible divorce. Such
a union, good for time and eternity, between the
spirit and those spiritual things which are its proper
object, can only prove itself by its actual existence

Incarnation and Atonement Necessary. 37
and by experience of itself; it cannot be proved
from without. For example, to the tried and devel
oped Christian consciousness it becomes more and
more an impossibiUty that the final act and ultimate
fact of relationship between God and man should be
or should be thought anything less or other than an
incarnation. Religion ends inevitably in incarnation ;
and the more the truth is explored and understood
and reaUzed not by the speculative but by the prac
tical and spiritual reason and experience, the more
the inevitableness of its being so or the impossibiUty
of its being otherwise becomes a conviction and is
raised into a certainty.
It is the same with the truth expressed by the
word " atonement." It is true that theories of atone
ment have so revolted the reason and conscience of
man as to have created a not unnatural prejudice
against the doctrine; but a doctrine of atonement
is an inevitable element of any real religion. The
human soul is not at one and needs to be made so
with itself, the moral law, and God; and no reUgion
serves its end that does not bring this reconciliation
and peace. Its necessary function is to take away
sin, to remove the separation by removing that which
separates between God and man, and so consum
mate their union and oneness.
As much may be said of the truth or fact of re
demption. A gospel for us must be a gospel of
spiritual and moral freedom, of liberty to be or to
become our true and complete selves; it must re
move the bond of blindness from the eye, of deaf
ness from the ear, of ignorance from the mind, of

38 The Ecumenical Councils.
weakness from the wUl, of sin from the soul and of
death from the life.
If we turn to see how these and aU other truths
necessary to a real religion or gospel were realized
for us in Jesus Christ we shall find the same thing.
The spiritual and moral personal human life and
character of Jesus Christ is human salvation — the
whole and the only salvation of which humanity is
in need or is capable. It is a complete incarnation,
atonement, redemption, anything else, everything
else which human reason can conceive or human
experience realize of necessary deliverance from evil
or possible consummation in good. Man can only
be saved or perfected through conformity to a final
standard which it is his end or destiny to attain ;
and the scriptural statement on the subject is the last
word upon it : " Whom he foreknew, them he predes
tined to be conformed to the image of his Son." If
we study either the reUgious or the ethical type of
manhood which our Lord has made current in the
world we shall feel the impossibility of their ever
being revised or changed. If a scientific moraHty
should succeed in replacing that which has hitherto
rested upon the faith, love and obedience of Christ
it will have to accept his principles though it reject
his person. But the cross of Christ will never cease
to be the symbol as it is the only possible principle
of the highest human Ufe and character. There is
but one way either to Godhead or to the truest man
hood — the VIA CRUCIS ; and none can come either to
the Father or to real selfhood and personality but
by it.

Meaning of Inspiration. 39
All these are merely iUustrations, the most palpa
ble and nearest at hand, to prove that it is only that
which is true of — the truth of — the soul that is true
to the soul, and that the soul that knows itself
knows the things that belong to it. So it knows
God and so it knows that union and oneness of God
with itself which it finds in Jesus Christ. And so in
Christ and his cross it knows its atonfement with God,
its redemption from sin, its resurrection from death.
Now it is the highest reach and form of this spirit
ual certitude of spiritual things, as they are found in
their fulness in the person and work of Jesus Christ,
which was attained and expressed in the Scriptures
and which we call inspiration. As our Lord himself
was in fact only found and accepted of men to be
divine because he was divine, so, if not all, it is per
haps enough to say of the Scriptures that they were
found and received of the church to be inspired be
cause they were inspired. At any rate the church
recognized in them that highest elevation of the hu
man spirit to receive and understand the things of the
divine Spirit which it accepted as its own measure
and standard of knowledge and to which it gave
the name, by exceUence, of inspiration. This highest
knowledge of spiritual things as they are revealed in
Christ it may be true that we are but it is not neces
sary that we should be able to distinguish in kind
from that which the church conrinues to possess and
which every human soul may have of God and of his
revelarion to it of himself. AU that is necessary is
that those who werfi nearest to him in time and space
should have so known our Lord as it was essential

40 The Ecumenical Councils.
that he should be known if he was to be any revela
tion at all of God and of human salvation, and that
they should have so recorded and transmitted their
knowledge of him that it should continue to be the
possession of the church after them.
When we thus endeavor to find in ourselves, in
our own reason and experience the basis for spiritual
knowledge and certitude, we are not ignoring the
operation of the Holy Ghost, whose function it is to
bring us into all truth and especially to reveal Christ
in us as the fulness of truth. It is indeed only God
who can reveal himself in us but even God can re
veal himself in us only through the spiritual reason
and experience by which alone we can know him.
We may not with Pelagius confound grace with
nature, the spiritual real knowledge and experience of
God with mere natural speculation and conjecture
about him, but we must find and exhibit the pres
ence and operation of the divine Spirit in us in the
life and activities of our own spirit, which is his only
organ in us.
As the right and power of the individual soul to
know God and to know the things that are freely
given to it of God is thus the basis and the only
necessary basis of the authority of Scripture, so
equally is it that of the authority of the church in
after-time to interpret the Scriptures. And not only
to recognize the right of personal truth but also to rec
ognize it as the principle and- basis of all other truth
is not to deny the fact and necessity of a catholic any
more than that of a scriptural truth. It is the func
tion of the individual and personal reason to appre-

Particular and Universal Truth. 41
hend rational truth and there is no such entity as a
universal or common reason over and above and
superior to that of particular men. Just as little is
there a thought or mind of Christendom or of the
Christian church as a whole superior to and possess
ing authority over the minds and thoughts of indi
vidual Christians. All knowledge of any sort, human
or divine, comes primarily through the reason and
experience of individual men. But while there is no
common or general faculty or organ of either reason
or faith there are conclusions or decisions of indi
vidual and personal reason and faith which in time
become common, general, or even universal. There
is an objective truth and reality that corresponds to
and complements and completes human intelligence
and desire ; and while this objective reaUty does not
"find" or is not found by every individual human
soul, yet in the long run the common sense and com
mon consent of souls does so accept it as to establish
its right to be called universal. There are a great
many natural truths that have long since passed
through individual reasons into the universal reason
of mankind — by which we mean not a separate com
mon judgment but a common consent among all the
particular judgments of men. And although indi
viduals and even many individuals may theoretically
deny such truths yet the rational world does not
question their claim or right to universality. In the
same way there are truths of the Spirit that can be
apprehended only by individual spirits but which,
just because they are truths of the Spirit, necessary
to spiritual thought and life and therefore true for all

42 The Ecumenical Councils.
spirits, are so accepted of all as to constitute a body
of truth which we call cathoUc.
It is absurd to deny the existence and necessity
of such a body of catholic truth, either in the natural
or in the spiritual sphere. If it were not possible by
such a principle and process as we have described
of general consent or agreement to be continually
accumulating an ever-increasing store of common or
certain truths, there would be no such thing at all
as natural or spiritual knowledge and progress. It
was a foregone necessity therefore that the Christian
church, claiming to hold in itself the fulness of spir
itual truth and life, should as soon as it was able to
do so proceed to set up over against the particular
vagaries of its individual members a standard of
cathoUc faith and practice. We remember that the
promise and assurance was given not to individual
believers but to the body of beUevers — 'the church
— of a permanent possession of the truth. And this
promise was to be made good by the presence with
the church of the Holy Ghost, through whom, as
God was in Christ, so Christ was to be spiritually
present with the church to the end of time. But it
is not enough to give this merely external account of
how the church was to be kept in the truth. We
may depend upon it that the only true supernatural is
the truest natural and that the most divine is iden
tical with the most human safeguard of God's truth
among men. And so we shall find that as all the
knowledge, wisdom and progress of men in all de
partments of human life and thought have passed
through the experience of individuals into the accept-

The Increment of Truth. 43
ance and possession of communities, races and the
common humanity, so God makes spiritual truth for
mankind pass through the spiritual experience of
mankind and by proving itself true for all to become
the truth of all. The church is truly the Koiv(j)via tuv
dyiui', the community, the common experience, truth,
faith, life of the individual saints — any one of whom
can know himself wholly as indeed he thinks or ex
ists at all only in it. Just as the thought or wisdom
of the most original thinker of any age is in the main
the thought and wisdom of the age with the very
slight addition of his own original contribution to it,
so the greatest genius who has risen to recognition
as a Christian theologian has been independent of the
common thought or of the common results of thought
in the church only to the extent of some infinitesimal
addition of his own to the common store of its know
ledge and doctrine. In this as in every other depart
ment of human experience and knowledge no indi
vidual who really adds to or advances it begins at the
beginning but only at the end of an already long and
large accumulation of tested, verified and accepted
truth which it is ignorance and folly to ignore and
to which no one who ignores it can possibly have
anything to add. Indeed all truth which appeals to
the common experience for its verification must ap
peal to an experience which is not only wider but
much larger than that of individuals ; for it is not only
time alone but generally only a long rime that re
veals the natural consequences and the real nature of
things. There is a sense perhaps in which no truth
ought to be considered final and irreformable. If it

44 The Ecumenical Councils.
has been only by repeated thinking over and retesting
in the past that it has become generally received,
why at any particular point in the present or the fu
ture should this process cease? But spiritual know
ledge would be an exception to all other results of
human reason and experience if nothing in it becomes
practicaUy if not theoretically final and concluded,
and he must be transcendently great who with pro
priety sets up in such matters himself and his brief
and narrow experience against the spiritual consent
of the ages. The present is indeed older and ought
to be wiser than the past but it is only so as it has
added its own to the wisdom of the past, and the
individual who in this day thinks himself indepen
dent of the church is either only ignorant whence he
derives his faith or else possesses in his faith an in
finitely doubtful and uncertain factor. Christianity as
we have seen is not only truth from God but is also
the truth of us, and whUe the truth from God was
complete from the first in Jesus Christ and was from
the first sufficiently contained in the Scriptures, yet
not God himself nor Jesus Christ nor the Scriptures
could sufficiently attest to us the truth of Christianity
as our truth and our life if it were not equaUy attested
as such by the spiritual common sense and experience
of men always and everywhere.
It may be asked. What does the church mean by
the " all, always, and everywhere " which it sets up
against the uncertainties and contradictions of private
judgment? But in all departments of knowledge the
" all " whose consent constitutes universaUty and
carries authority is not literal or numerical but rep-

The Church and the Council. 45
resentative ; the suffrage is necessarily limited to
those who are qualified to bear testimony to the
common sense and reason in the matter. The " com
mon law " is not common in any more literal sense
than this and the simplest judgments and sentiments
of every-day conduct and life are not literally and
numerically universal. If there is any truth in the
church at all or any certainty with regard to its truth,
there must be in it, at least as much as in the fields
of human experience and knowledge, a body of cath
olic or universal truth as distinguished from the in
finite varieties of private opinion.
We have thus recognized the function of the church
as a whole as necessary to a complete comprehension
and representation of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ.
It was inevitable that the church should very soon be
forced to discharge this function in the formation of
a body of cathoUc truth. This was not its sole task ;
it had to form for itself, for example, a catholic order
or organization and a catholic worship as well as a
catholic faith ; but with this latter only we are at pres
ent concerned. How it should arrive at an adequate
expression of its common mind was quite a secondary
matter; the essenrial point was that that which was
expressed should be truly and reaUy the common
mind. In expressing itself as it did through repre
sentative, general or ecumenical councils as soon as
it was in condition to do so, it doubtless availed itself
of the best possible, perhaps the only practicable in
strumentality at its command. But the council merely
as such was an accident and not at all the essence of
such authority as might afterward attach to its utter-

46 The Ecumenical Councils.
ances. It was the voice of the church, not of the coun
cU, that was of force, and this might or might not be
reached through the council. Sometimes it was not
when it might weU have been expected, and some
times it was when — from being smaller and less gen
eral or for other reasons — it would hardly have been
expected. The point or principle of the whole matter is that
just as the reason of humanity points on the whole
to the truth and the conscience of humanity acqui
esces in the right, so the common or universal spirit
ual consciousness and experience of the whole Chris
tian church is the only test of what Christianity is.
The question is how to get its verdict ; and even when
under the most favorable conditions and with the best
guarantee of truth the councU has assumed to render
this, it can only be ascertained that the verdict is true,
and will stand by a long and silent process through
which the decision is referred back to the church
again to say whether it has correctly expressed itself
through its council. If the church thus accepts the
councU as its voice, by that fact it imparts to it an
authority which is its own and not that of the council.
The truth of Christianity is the truth of Jesus Christ
and the truth of Christ is a matter of ourselves as weU
as of God. If it is indeed the truth and the whole
truth of ourselves, then we know that it is God's truth
of us. It is impossible that we should know otherwise
whether or not it is of God. The authority of the
church, the authority of the Scriptures, the authority
of our Lord, the authority of God, are all a very great
deal along with the authority of a really universal

Authority and Experience. 47
human experience (which means not all experience,
but all that truly experiences). Without the latter it
would be impossible that aU the former should possess
for us any weight or value. We could neither prove
that we really have them nor enforce upon ourselves
or others their claim or demand.

CHAPTER III.
EBIONISM AND DOCETISM.
|N and from the day of Pentecost upon
which the Christian church took its birth,
the apostles in Jerusalem preached a gos
pel, administered a baptism and celebrated
a rite of holy communion in each of which
was involved the whole truth of the person and work
of Jesus Christ. But it is not necessary to believe
that these apostles themselves had in their minds a
developed and defined doctrine of the person and
work of our Lord. The incarnate truth is ever more
divinely present than it is humanly apprehended or
comprehended. Present in its completeness in the
beginning, it wUl never be understood and received
in its completeness untU that end when we shall come
to know as all along we have been known. And
whatever we may say of the apostles, very certainly
the infant church of Jerusalem held no perfect and
expUcit doctrine of the truth completely present in
its midst. It would have been pure miracle or magic
if it had at once consciously held the whole truth or
been wholly free from error. As a matter of fact we
find that while the truth as it is in Jesus had no his
tory after it was finished in his ascension, the know-
48

Jewish and Gentile Christians. 49
ledge of it had a history as human and as natural as
human nature itself, and that to know human nature
is all that is necessary to anticipate and explain that
history. We must remember then that while the infant
church was Christian it was also still Jewish and we
must endeavor to realize what this meant for its im
mediate further progress and development. There
were certainly many in it who remained much more
Jews than they had become Christians and there was
probably not one who had become so Christian as
to be no longer a Jew. When St. Paul through his
experience with Jews and Gentiles was brought at
first practically and then theoretically and as a matter
of essential and vital principle to see that the church
could only become wholly and truly Christian by
wholly ceasing to be Jewish, there was not one of the
original apostles who was prepared to go the whole
length with him. A series of compromises and ac
commodations was necessary to keep even him and
them united in the common cause, and this was not
always and entirely successful. The distance between
the many in Jerusalem who regarded Christianity as
only a higher advance or stage of Judaism and one
who like St. Paul on the other extreme had come to
see in it a divine reversal of the fundamental prin
ciple of Judaism was a very wide one. But St. Paul
while he saw in Chrisrianity and Judaism the gospel
and the law, a reversal of principle and therefore an
irreconcilable antagonism, could nevertheless see that
as successive stages both were true and divine and
each in its order served its purpose — the one as neces-

50 The Ecu7nenical Councils.
sary contrast and preparation for the other. Never
theless between the traditional conservative Jewish
spirit and the emancipated progressive Gentile spirit
there was an inevitable antagonism which could not
but in both directions burst the bonds of a common
unity and put itself outside of the true Christian
principle. We may anticipate that the first Christian heresy
was Judaistic in its form, that the tendency to it ex
isted from the very beginning and that it consisted
in a more or less partial and incomplete acceptance
of the truth as it is in Jesus. Between some sort of
a faith in Jesus Christ and the acceptance of him in
the fulness and reaUty of his divine and human person
and work there is a scale that runs from nothing to
everything. The heresy which embodied this Jewish imperfect
conception of the person of Christ assumed a form
which under many modifications became known as
Ebionism. We have called it Jewish and we shaU
see how naturally it originated out of and how closely
it is akin to the essential principle of Judaism; but
the term " Ebionism " is very convenient to designate
a point of view from which It Is always possible and
probable that the person of our Lord will be re
garded; It is on one side of almost every Christo
logical question that has arisen or can arise and it
is therefore weU for us to devote a little space to its
history and exposition.
When one reflects upon It it might seem that Ju
daism was the least likely source from which Chris
tianity should or could have originated, unless we

The Mission of Judaism. 51
regard It as having done so by reaction to principles
the most opposed and apparently contradictory to It.
Judaism was not only the most narrow and exclusive
but the most deistic and legal of religions, and Chris
tianity is the least so. This contrast between two
systems of which the first was the divine preparation
for the second and the second the divine outcome
of the first will not surprise us if we understand In
what way they bore this reciprocal relation to each
other. In the first place the mission of Judaism was to
emphasize the difference and the distance between
God and the world and between God and man. Its
object was to break up the pantheistic, heathen con
fusion of the two, and to do this as a necessary
preparation for substituting for the merely natural,
immanental and necessary relationship between God
and the world a spiritual, moral and personal rela
tionship between them. Judaism, coming between
the heathen pantheistic or substantial identity of God
and his creation and the Christian theistic or personal
unity of God and his creation, was designed to puU
down the former In order to prepare for the erection
of the latter. It separates In order to unite, magni
fies the distance In order to render possible the ap
proach and the nearness, emphasizes the infinite dif
ference, the duality, in order to bring about the atone
ment, the union and unity of God with his no longer
merely natural and necessary but now spiritual, free
and moral creatures.
It was part In the second place of the above divine
plan that Judaism was essentially a legal or moral

52 The Ecumenical Councils.
system, that it represented the principle of law as
contradistinguished not only from mere natural and
animal Impulse behind it but from the principle of
grace or gospel before it. It was intended to develop
man In his Independence of God, to educate in him
the ethical or moral principle of personal autonomy
and responsibiUty and make him a law to himself
and to teach him by experience the necessity and
blessedness of obedience to that law and the curse
of disobedience or unrighteousness. In a word the
end of the law under Judaism was to make man
moral in preparation for making him spiritual, to con
vert his unconscious, natural and necessary relation
and dependence upon God into a conscious, personal
and free one, to make his wiU his own that he might
make It God's. It is a necessary part of the evolu
tion of a true manhood that it should learn both its
Independence and Its dependence upon God, both
that God cannot make it without itself^ without the
free and perfect exercise of its own will, and that it
cannot make itself without God, without a free and
perfect realizing in Itself of the divine wiU. The de
sign and result of the law was thus a double one, to
teach at once the necessity and the impossibiUty of a
personal human righteousness. Man only becomes
man by asserting himself In his freedom against an
environment of mere nature and necessity, but equally
he only becomes himself by surrendering the freedom
so asserted to the personal will and wisdom that is
above nature and necessity. But it is characteristic
of a system of mere divine law and not grace that it
casts man off upon himself ; it requires of him to be-

Heathenism, Judaism, Christianity. 53
come himself in and by himself and so, beginning
with building him up In his Independence, ends by
casting him down in the discovery and consciousness
of his utter dependence. It might be said that It Is
the method of God to unchUd men by nature in order
to make them his children by grace, to cast them upon
themselves so as to compel them to come back to him
of themselves, to want and seek him through faith,
and to become anew his chUdren by the higher per
sonal bond of mutual love, — for so alone could the
natural, necessary, Immanental relation and depen
dence of all things alike upon God pass up into the
free, filial, spiritual relation and dependence of finite
personalities upon the infinite divine Person.
Judaism however, while it fully accepted and ac
centuated its mission as against heathenism which It
displaced, perhaps not unnaturally did not equally
comprehend and accept its relation to Christianity
which was to displace It. It stood midway between
the two with a deism that was indeed free enough
from pantheism, that had separated widely enough
between God and the world, but that was just as
far behind that true theism which through the truths
of the Trinity and the Incarnation was to reconcile and
reunite God and the world ; and with a moral law
which was no longer mere naturaUsm and necessity
but which equaUy feU short of the true law of grace
and love and life in Christ Jesus. And so Judaism,
exclusive from behind as against heathenism, excluded
itself no less from before from the Christianity of
which it was Itself the preparation and the precursor.
It was this spirit of partial preparation for Christian-

54 The Ecumenical Councils.
Ity and yet of essential unpreparedness for the dis
tinctive principle of Christianity which In the bosom
of the Infant church rejected In the very act of accept
ing it. It was the first form of that antichristlanity
which under its own name contradicts and destroys
Christianity. To it It was impossible that there should
be a real Incarnation for, standing by its very nature
and position for the eternal and infinite distinction
between God and the world of things and men, it
was unable to see any difference between the panthe
istic identification of the two of heathenism and the
theistic union and unity of the two of Christianity.
Both aUke to It blasphemed God in making God one
with his creatures or any creature one with God.
Judaistic Ebionism accepted Christianity as the high
est law or the highest realization and expression of
the law and Christ himself as the highest man or the
highest prophet, — but beyond this It would not and
could not gu. To recognize a personal divine, an In
carnation of God, either that of the Logos in Jesus
Christ himself or that of the Holy Ghost in the re
generate divine life of those who are in Christ, was
above and beyond Its ken.
It Is not our purpose to give a full historical account
of Ebionism in its various modifications and changes.
After it had separated itself or been excluded from
the church and become a sect In opposition to It, it
took Its name as was early supposed from a leader
by the name of Ebion, but probably from the appU
cation to it of the Hebrew term signifying "poor,"
which it accepted upon the ground that Christianity
Is a call to that poverty to which its founder attached

Ebionisfn. 55

the first "blessedness." But as a hostile principle
within the church long prior to Its exclusion and sep
arate existence we are familiar with It In the form of
that deadly animosity which dogged the footsteps
and hindered the labors of St. Paul and for a hun
dred years after his death spared no effort to damn
his memory and efface his influence. It was at first
purely Judaic in the sense that has been described
but later, through Essene and Gnostic intermixtures,
it contracted certain other features from without.
Yielding to the necessity of regarding Jesus as more
than a mere man no matter how high or gifted, it
came to represent him as the Incarnation of a higher
being though still a creature, who Is or Is to be the
prince of the world to come as Satan Is the prince of
this world.
Ebionism would be unworthy of even the Incom
plete notice we have given it in the treatment of a
period that had outgrown and discarded It but for
two reasons.
In the first place It has come to be assumed as
estabUshed among a large class of historical students
that Ebionism not only lurked as a leaven of Jew
ish conservatism and obstructionism In the bosom of
primitive Christianity but was itself original Chris
tianity — the Christianity of Jesus and of the real
apostles. According to this view the simple human
moral and reUgious teaching of Jesus began first In
the active and fertUe mind of St. Paul that process
of IdeaUstic transformation which converted it finally
into the catholic religion of the world. It is not for
us to enter Into controversy with a position which to

56 The Ecumenical Councils.
a mind that has once felt the inherent and Inevita
ble truth and power of essential Christianity becomes
thenceforth Inconceivable and Impossible. That Chris
tianity was not the truth that outgrew and cast off
Ebionism as a remnant in It of Jewish error but that
Ebionism was the truth from which Christianity de
veloped as an error ; that not Jesus and his apostles
but false apostles and teachers, who perverted and
transformed their simple and natural doctrine, are the
real founders of historical Christianity; that Chris
tianity is not a divine incarnation, atonement, re
demption and eternal salvation and life for all men
but only a stupendous human creation of the imagi
nation erected upon the slender foundation of the
natural goodness and piety of a mere man — this Is the
modern form in which the earUest Christian heresy
has been resuscitated and flourishes In our own day.
If what Is thus claimed had been Indeed the whole of
primitive Christianity the world would never have
become Christian ; If It be proved now to be all of It
the world will soon cease to be Christian.
The other reason why we have thought It well to
dwell thus much upon Ebionism is that after It had
passed away under that name and in Its primitive
form It continued to reappear In other and higher
forms which however different In appearance were
identical with it in principle and connected with It
in origin. The course that It ran within the period
under our consideration was briefly the following :
At the close of the second and beginning of the
third centuries, Theodotus and Artemon taught in
Rome the doctrine of the mere manhood of our Lord

Arteinon and Paul of Samosata. 57
and were successively excommunicated by Bishops
Victor and Zephyrinus. They claimed to represent the
primitive truth of the church which they aUeged was
now for the first time perverted from Its simplicity In
Rome itself. But how much value need be attached
to this claim may be iUustrated by the fact that Arte
mon distinctly charges Zephyrinus with being the
first perverter of the truth in condemning his teach
ing, whereas the preceding bishop, Victor, had passed
the same condemnation upon the same teaching by
his predecessor in the heresy, Theodotus.
The one representative of the heresy who attained
prominence was Paul of Samosata, metropolitan of
Antioch, who was deposed and excommunicated In
the year 269. Paul affirmed distinctly the mere man
hood of our Lord. He held Indeed that the divine
Logos was Incarnate in him but he denied both the
personality of the Logos and the reality of the incar
nation in any other sense than that in which the wis
dom and grace of God may be incarnate in any man.
" Wisdom dwelt In him as In no other," that is to say,
in degree but not In kind. The IndweUing was not
that of a person but of a quaUty or character. Jesus
Christ was divine not in the sense that he was God
become man but man become as God. " The deity
grew by gradual progress out of the humanity " [hk.
TTpoKonijg eOeonoi'qdTj, £| avOpunuv yeyove Oeoq). The ac
tion of the two or three synods in Antioch that finally
exposed and condemned the heresy is sufficient evi
dence of its novelty and strangeness in the church.
Paul succeeded In veUing and conceaUng his real error
under orthodox expressions untUhe was confronted by

58 The Ecumenical Councils.
an expert dialectician, who succeeded, in the language
of Dr. Neale, "in exposing the subterfuges of the
heretic, pursuing him to his last shifts, and reducing
his dogmas to their naked deformity."
Among the alleged followers of Paul of Samosata
and for that reason Involved in his condemnation and
for a long time separated from the communion of the
church was the famous Luclan, probably one of the
first of the great teachers of that famous school of
Antioch with whose part In Christological science we
are hereafter to become familiar.
Beside having his name associated with that of
Paul, Luclan had the additional misfortune to be after
ward claimed and revered as their master by most
of the great representatives of Arianism, so much so
as to acquire the reputation of being its real author.
It is not probable that Luclan was guilty of the errors
of either Paul or Arius ; he died in the full communion
of the church the glorious death of a martyr. But
his name Unks together tv/o heresies which however
otherwise different agree In this, that they represent
the principle of Ebionism and succeed each other his
torically in the denial of the true divinity of the per
son and work of Jesus Christ. Dr. Newman, in his
" Arians of the Fourth Century," has cleariy traced
the presence and influence of Judaism in both Samo-
satenism and Arianism. Paul's great patroness Zeno-
bia was a Jewess, and Paul himself was more than
anything else a courrier and polirician. Judaism at
the time was experiencing a revival and was exert
ing a living and potent influence on the thought and
life of Syria, and that It Indirectly influenced not

Samosatenism and Arianism. 59
only the theology of Paul of Samosata but also that of
the greater heresy which was to rack the church and
the world during all the succeeding century was not
only testified to by the consciousness of the great
fathers engaged In it but will also appear In the analy
sis of its character and essential principles. Mean
time that there was an historical connection between
Samosatenism and Arianism will appear from such
testimony as the following. Bishop Alexander,
under whom about the year 318 Arianism broke out
in the city of Alexandria — though its real origin was
not there — writes concerning it to the church of Con
stantinople : " You are not ignorant that this rebel
lious doctrine belongs to Ebion and Artemas and Is
In imitation of Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch,
who was excommunicated by the sentence of the bish
ops assembled in council from all quarters. Paulus
was succeeded by Luclan, who remained in separation
for many years. Our present heretics have drunk up
the dregs of the impiety of these men and are their
secret offspring. Accordingly they have been ex
pelled from the church as enemies of the pious catho
Uc teaching according to St. Paul's sentence, ' If any
man preach any other gospel to you than that ye
have received, let him be anathema.' "
By a not more remote bond than that which con
nects Paul of Samosata and Arius we may unite Arius
and Nestorius, who are far enough apart In the gen
eral character of their heresies but are alike In this
that they are ecclesiastical successors in the practical
If not intentional denial of the true divinity of the
person of Jesus Christ. In the mediaeval world the

6o The EcuTnenical Councils.
tendency was taken up again and represented by
Adoptionism. In the modern world the type has
reverted to Its earliest form and we begin over again
with a humanltarianism which is a revival in modern
scientific guise of the primitive Ebionism.
We might perhaps say that as Ebionism was the nat
ural Jewish perversion of Christianity so its heathen
or Greek- Oriental natural perversion was Docetism,
and of this we must next endeavor to give an account.
The world which enveloped both Judaism and
Christianity was at once Oriental and Greek in that
combination of the two which appeared at its height
in the great city of Alexandria. The leading char
acteristic of this Greek world of the East, so far as
concerns our subject. Is that it was vastly more intel
lectual and speculative than It was practical or moral ;
it was more concerned with thought than with con
duct or life. If what had concerned the best mind of
the Jews was righteousness, what concerned that of
these Greeks was wisdom. We might say that this
was true of the Greek mind altogether if we did not
remember Socrates and the schools of some of his
best successors. But the moral earnestness of these
had mostly passed with Stoicism over to the Romans
and even the best Greek theology of the age we are
about to study is characterized by this difference from
Latin theology, that while it primarily at least and
predominantly treats Christianity as a revelation of
truth, the latter regards It as a law of righteousness
and a communication of Hfe. The general tendency
thus of the Alexandrian Greek mind was already in
the direction of Docetism — to dwell more upon the

Dualism, 6i

manifestation of the divine in our Lord's person and
life than upon the reality and significance of the hu
man ; and we shall have occasion to trace this dispo
sition In even the most Ulustrious representatives of
Alexandrian Christianity.
The religious speculation which Christianity found
already In vogue in the active intellectual world of
which Alexandria was the capital was largely devoted
to questions of cosmogony and cosmology, of the re
lations between Creator and creation, between spirit
and matter. And when we remember how soon In
Christianity a cosmlcal significance was attached to the
person and work of our Lord not only through the
Logos doctrine of St. John but also In the earlier teach
ing of the Epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians and
Hebrews, we shall not be surprised at the affinity be
tween this aspect of Christianity and those outside
philosophical speculations or that these latter should
have eagerly clutched at many features of Christo
logical doctrine as easily lending themselves to their
use and promising solutions to some of their most
difficult problems.
The Insuperable difficulty of cosmological specula
tion in all time has been the coexistence In one world
of good and evil. The contradiction and endless con
flict of these two opposites has baffled all attempts to
reduce to a single principle that universe whose very
title bears witness to the fact that it is a necessity of
thought to think of It as a unit, instead of which the
Irreconcilability of these two elements, always side
by side, only throws the mind back again and again
upon some form of duaUsm. Either there are two

62 The Ecumenical Councils.
gods or God and matter are coeternal and conflicting
sources of opposite impulses and activities or if all
things come from an original single first cause they
cannot all alike have proceeded immediately from it.
There must have intervened a series of intermediate
gradual removes and lapses In the course of which
changes, declensions and even contradictions have
entered Into the working of things, and the Immedi
ate cause or causes of the world as it Is must be very
far removed from its primal cause and purpose.
This last device of successive emanations (aeons)
from the great first principle of the universe, ending
In such variations from it as to produce confusion, con
tradiction and evil. Is the basis of the powerful sys
tems of Gnosticism, which were the dominant fact of
external reUgious speculation confronting Christianity
almost from the moment of Its Inception, and which
carried a priori speculation to a point perhaps never
elsewhere paralleled.
Christianity Itself lays claim to the true gnosis ;
it affirms that all the treasures of not only faith and
life but wisdom and knowledge also are contained In
the true doctrine of Jesus Christ. It maintains that
In him are solved aU the mysteries of creation and its
final destination, of evil and its uses, of redemption
cosmlcal as well as human, of the ultimate recapitu
lation and reconciliation of all things in God under
Jesus Christ as their head. Such suggestions could
not but be eagerly seized and furnish endless fuel
to the flame of Gnostic speculation. Gnosticism
might almost be said to have taken Christianity and
run away with It. But while Gnosticism thus in a

Gnosticism. 63

sense became Christian, Christianity Itself refused to
become Gnostic. In many different forms Christolo-
gles arose so remote from the sober truth of Christ
as whoUy to cease to be Christian. The so-called
Christian gnosis was not at all Christianity making use
of outside philosophical principles or methods ; it was
outside philosophy of the most recklessly speculative
type availing itself of Christian ideas and suggestions
and perverting them to its uses and ends.
A serious obstacle stood In the way of the appro
priation by Gnosticism of the real matter of Chris
tianity. The essence of Christianity Is the doctrine
of a divine incarnation, and the principle of the In
herent evil of nature and matter, inseparable from
the duaUstIc character of that phUosophy, rendered
any real Incarnation in it of the Highest an Impossi
biUty. And this was the immediate cause of Doce
tism. The result was In aU the Gnostic Chrlstologies
a more or less unreal or Docetic theory of Incarnation
according to which our Lord assumed not actual flesh
and blood, not an actual human nature and human
experiences such as our own, but a mere semblance
or outward appearance of all these.
Such a mere product or feature of Gnostic specu
lation as the Docetism which thus originated on the
outside of Christianity we need not for Its own sake
have paused thus to norice ; but the spirit or princi
ple of Docerism, Uke that of Ebionism, very soon in
vaded Chrisrianity Itself. The two are, one or the
other of them, at the root of all Its perversions In
opposite directions, and they are equally subtle, per
vasive and destructive of its essential truth.

64 The Ecumenical Councils.
Tendencies to Docetism along with other Gnostic
elements are as old as the New Testament, where —
beside hints of it from St. Paul — St. John Is com
pelled to assert and emphasize the reality of even our
Lord's body or flesh. Indeed one of the earliest and
strongest circumstantial evidences of the primitiveness
of the catholic truth If not yet the explicit catholic
doctrine of the divine-human personality of Jesus
Christ Is to be found In the fact that from the first, If
there was a tendency on one side to deny his divin
ity, there was an equally strong one on the other to
deny the reaUty of his humanity. If this tendency
had remained on the outside or even on the outer
side of Christianity, or if it had any more than Ebion
ism been really when it was apparently got rid of
by the later action of the church, it would be useless
now to resuscitate even the memory of It. But It
crept In the early centuries Into the Inner heart of the
church while this was Intent only upon excluding
from itself the opposite vice of Ebionism, and whUe
It was denied In terms by the lips of several general
councils It was never successfully exorcised, as we
shall see, from sentiment and life.
We must remember how quickly Christianity passed
out of Hebrew into Greek thought and expression.
And so long as It continued Greek, which was dur
ing all the period of the general councils, along with
many advantages as regarded its science It was more
or less subject to the Greek tendency to regard Itself
rather as revealing God than as redeeming men. In
deed Its temptation was to make redemption synony
mous with enUghtenment, just as even Socrates the

Docetism. 65

most ethical of Greeks Identified virtue with know
ledge. But Christianity is, in order at least of Im
portance, even more a communication of power and
life than a revelarion of truth ; it is primarily a fact
and an experience and only secondarily a science.
It Is God our Ufe and our righteousness and only as
such our wisdom and our Ught. It is only a personal
and moral Interest, a sense of ourselves, our responsi
biUties, weaknesses and wants, our need of God, sal
vation and eternal Ufe, that enables us to know either the
necessity or the meaning of a divine Incarnation. God
comes not to manifest only but also to communicate
himself to us. If mere knowledge and enlightenment
were aU that Is necessary to our salvation a Docetic
Christ, an Ideal Christ, a true representation though
it be only a representation of the realization of God
in man and man In God would be aU we need. But
we do not want only to know God ; we want God.
We do not want a picture of redemption ; we want to
be redeemed.
To the heart that so wants God and what God has
to give the only Incarnation Is one that Is as real in Its
humanity and In its effects and results in humanity as
it Is In the actuality and power and glory of Its divinity.
For a long time the church was so wholly taken up with
exposing and excluding false or insufficient views of the
divine nature of our Lord that It passed over and was
unconscious of no less false and Insufficient views of his
human nature. It had not itself as yet realized how
vitaUy necessary it was that the flesh of the divine in
carnation, the humanity of the Incarnate Lord, should
be known to be — what it was — not a part and that

66 The Ecumenical Councils.
the lowest but the whole, the totality of a complete
human nature, soul and spirit as well as body. It had
not yet fuUy felt the necessity to a real Incarnation of
the very humanity of our Lord, not only through his
whole nature but also through his whole personal hu
man life and experiences ; that it was not only essen
tial he should have truly hungered and thirsted, been
weary and suffered and died, but that he should also
have been humanly Ignorant and weak, been tempted,
have prayed, believed, received grace and been saved,
have overcome sin and conquered death. It did not
realize sufficiently that It was possible to reprobate
and reject Docetism when applied to the lower and
merely material parts of our Lord's humanity and yet
take a Docetic position toward the higher and really
essential aspects and activities of it ; to recognize his
humanity in the merely physical and necessary func
tions of his life as man and ignore or deny it In those
spiritual, moral and personal acts and activities In
which all the truth and use of his human life lay. For
if It was what God was and did in Jesus Christ that
was the cause and condition. It was what humanity
was enabled to do and to become In him that was the
actual matter and res of human salvation, viz., that
through trials and suffering and death it became free
from sin and alive from death. In that he as man
separated humanity from sin and raised It from death
all humanity was redeemed and regenerated.
After the Nicene Council had disposed of aU the
objections to our Lord's true divinity the church was
first fully awakened to the prevalence of the opposite
error by the teaching of ApoUInaris, who about the

Apollinarianism and Eutychianism. 67
year 375 enunciated the heresy that went under
his name. A-ccordIng to ApoUInaris, the humanity
assumed In the incarnation was limited to that of a
true human body and the natural or animal soul ; the
rational and spiritual parts and functions were sup
plied by the Logos. It will be seen at once that the
life of Jesus was not then that of a man but that of
a divine person in the mere form or mode of visibil
ity of physical manhood.
ApoUinarianism was condemned In the Second
General Council, A. D. 381. But the higher Doce
tism reappeared in Eutychianism, which while assert
ing the integrity and completeness In all Its parts,
body, soul and spirit, of the humanity assumed In
the Incarnation, yet so subordinated the human to the
divine, so absorbed the ivepyeia or proper activity and
freedom of the lower nature into that of the higher
as practically to annul the real manhood.
Eutychianism in turn was condemned in the
Fourth General Council of A. D. 451, but the heresy
was not dead and lived on with great vigor and
abUIty through the Monophysite and MonotheUte
controversies which having occupied two more gen
eral councUs and having fiUed more than two cen
turies with dissension and confusion left Oriental
Christendom hopelessly and permanently divided Into
hostile camps.
Within the catholic church itself, after and In
spite of the condemnation of general councils, the
higher Docetism or practical denial of our Lord's hu
manity in Its higher aspects and functions resumed
its sway after the period of the general councils. In

68 The Ecumenical Councils.
the undiscriminating and wholesale rejection of Adop
tionism the Christianity of the middle ages crushed
out the last effort before the Reformation to attach
a due and proportionate and vital importance to that
very and complete humanity in all Its parts and func
tions which our Lord assumed and in which alone
he was very and Indeed man or accomplished a veri
table redemption and completion of human nature.
We have thus endeavored to expose and trace In
preliminary outUne the two opposite natural ten
dencies that were the causes of all the deflections of
Christian doctrine from the beginning to right or
left of that straight course which it was the mission
and the effort of catholic thought to preserve in its
orderly evolution or unfolding. In the First, Third
and Fifth councils it was Ebionism that the church
condemned In the developed forms of Arianism and
Nestorianism. In the Second, Fourth and Sixth it
rejected Docetism under the subtler forms of ApoUi
narianism, Eutychianism, Monophysitism and Mo
nothelitism. Thus oscillating between tendencies In opposite
directions It was enabled to maintain its true direc
tion between them with — until modern times — a
leaning rather to the side of the divinity to the det
riment of the humanity than to that of the humanity
at any cost of the divinity.

CHAPTER IV.
SABELLIANISM AND THE BEGINNING OF THE
TRINITARIAN DISCUSSION.

T will be easily apparent that a Christol
ogy that Involves primarily the divin
ity of our Lord must go back Into very
serious questions of theology. How or
in what sense can Jesus Christ be said
to be God? And If we say that Jesus Christ was
God can we then also say that God was Jesus Christ ?
St. John says that in the beginning the Logos was
Qebg, God. Apart from the grammar, may we say that
he was 6 6e6g? Was the whole of God — was, for ex
ample, the eternal Father — Incarnate In Jesus Christ?
And if not, then In what sense was the divine Person
who was Incarnate one with God the Father and In
what sense was he to be distinguished from him?
These deep questions Involved necessarily much dis
cussion of the divine nature in itself as well as In its
relation to created nature and human nature. While
these questions of theology were under discussion
Christology was kept temporarily in abeyance and It
was not until the solution was found in the doctrine
of the Trinity that, with the ApoUInarlan controversy,
Christological discussion proper was resumed.
69

70 The Ecumenical Councils.
In the second century, as the result of the long
conflict of the church with Gnosticism, there emerged
the doctrine of the nionarcliia or of God as the sole
principle and source of the whole universe. The term
was used not only against dualism, the notion of two
eternal principles of things, two gods or God and
matter, but also against the multiplication of secondary
and derivative principles, aeons or emanations, which
according to Gnosticism Intervened between God and
created things and were the real causes or creators
of the universe. Against these in the doctrine of the
monarchia, as it was originally Intended, the church
asserted that the one God was the sole and Immedi
ate Creator and cause of all existence.
When within the church the implicit faith that not
only the invisible and eternal Father but also the
incarnate Son or Word was God, and that they were
so In a sense that while it Identified them In nature
distinguished them as persons, began to become the
subject of reflection and to seek for Itself exact and
accurate expression, still more when the relation of
the second and third persons to the first began to
be expressed In terms of physical derivation that
naturally recaUed the emanistic principles of •Gnosti
cism, — it was not strange that there should be those
who thought the truth of the monarchia at stake
again and who should assert It even against the true
doctrine of the Trinity. The simplest way to do this
was Uke the Eblonites proper to deny any divinity at
aU or Uke the Arians to deny the real and coequal
divinity of the Incarnate Word ; and this was Ebionitic
Monarchianism. But there was an alternative which

Patripassian Monarchianism. 71
gave rise to the SabeUIan or Patripassian Monar
chianism to which the name became more generally
appUed. At the time that Theodotus and Artemon
were successively preaching in Rome Ebionitic Mo
narchianism under Victor, Zephyrinus and CaUistus,
Praxeas and Noetus were also successively carrying
thither from Asia Minor the opposite form of Mo
narchianism. Among their Immediate successors In
the heresy was SabeUIus, of whom Uttle Is known
but whose name became subsequently attached to It
although he was neither Its founder nor probably Its
most prominent representative. All these writers In
the Interest of the monarchia denied not the divinity
of the Word or of the Spirit but their distinction from
the Father. Father, Son and Holy Ghost accord
ing to them are one God and not three persons or
distinct principles of action within the Godhead but
only different manifestations and functions of the one
only divine Person, who Is the sole apxf\ or principle
of divine activity In the universe. The consequence
was urged against them : then 6 Qehq, the whole God
head, the divine Father was Incarnate, suffered and
died. Hence the term " Patripassian," the third of
the three titles by which the heresy has been known
— Monarchians, Patripassians, SabeUians.
It is not our purpose here, any more than In previ
ous cases, to give the history or describe the vari
eties of false opinion to which we allude on the way
to the true doctrine of the Incarnation. SabelUanism
was not only actually or historically. It was logically
and of necessity the first step in conceiving the divine
or theological side of the truth as It was revealed

72 The Ecumenical Councils.
through Jesus Christ. To the simplest and most
primitive faith Christ was simply God, not eeof
merely but 6 Qtoq. Nothing less than God — not
something, not anything, not everything from God
but God himself — is what the soul wants; it was
made for him and will be satisfied only with him.
It wants God In its life. Its suffering. Its very death,
to be its comfort In suffering. Its life In death ; It wiU
have God suffer with us, die for us, that we may live
and be blessed in him and with him. What are specu
lative difficulties In the presence of real experiences,
when one knows the reality, the mystery of the one
ness of God with the soul in its depths and of the
soul with God In his heights! It Is not Improbable
that Sabellianism in its origin as In some of Its recent
reproductions represented the deepest interests of
religion as against the comparative shallowness and
trifling of even the most eager and earnest mere In
tellectual speculation.
We have nevertheless to try to reconcile real specu
lative difficulties with religious Interest and experi
ence, and there is a difficulty revealed by the term
"Patripasslanlsm." The difficulty however, in prin
ciple at least, is not limited to this particular form or
instance. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity was perhaps
before anything else an effort to express how Jesus
Christ was God (Geof) and yet In another sense was
not God (6 Qtix;) ; that Is to say, was not the whole
Godhead. Whatever the heart may say in the ex
cess of its experience and sense of the Infinite con
descension of the Infinite Father of spirits, the head

The Immanence of God. 'J2,
realizes the impossibility of saying that the Godhead
became man and died for men. Yet on the other
hand the Christian consciousness rejected from Its
deepest depths as the essence of IrreUgion and the
very principle of anti- Christianity every suggestion
that he who was incarnate and died was anything or
In any way less or other than the most high and the
most dear God of its life and Its salvation. As It
had rejected all Intermediaries between God and the
natural creation, so a thousandfold more it repudiated
all inferior mediation between God and his spiritual
creation, between the Infinite Spirit and his own Im
mediate presence and life In the finite spirits which
are his children. But If the doctrine of the Trinity
began with the task of reconciling the reality of an in
carnation of God with the difficulties expressed in one
word by the term " Patripasslanlsm " It went on to
solve perhaps even greater and more difficult prob
lems of religious thought. There is no doubt that It
contains the Christian theistic refutation of the uni
versal pantheism of heathenism.
The doctrine of the divine immanence Is a necessity
of thought. The idea of a creation In any moment
or at any point withdrawn or separate from the ac
tive inteUigence, wUl or word of its conscious Cre
ator is an absurdity and springs from the habit of
thinking of God as of ourselves. We must identify
God with his creation In an infinitely more real and
Intimate way and degree than any human worker with
his work, no matter how closely it may be as we say
part of himself. Any human so-called production,
creation or work Is only a change or redlsposition of

74 The Ecumenical Councils.
things already existent. Our works therefore may
live after us and be quite independent of us but God's
works, which are the real products or creation of his
thought, wIU or word, can have no existence or con
tinue to exist after or apart from his, or himself, think
ing, willing and speaking. Things are his thoughts,
his speech, language or words, which are the expres
sion of himself and have no existence apart from
him. God is therefore in his world in a sense far more
intimate and essential than we can think or express.
And yet on the other hand it is possible to identify
God too intimately and essentially with the world of
his creatures. We may make him so one as to be not
merely identified but identical with It. And this Is
just what pantheism does.
We say truly that God is in, is Immanent In the
world of created things. If he were not it would not
be for it has no being except In him. There is no
doubt that man in his divine idea and intention was
predestined to incarnate God, to be the form not only
of a divine life, a life like God's,but also of the divine
life, the personal life of the personal God himself. God
was not merely objectively to'himself to express or
reveal an impersonal wisdom or goodness ; he was to
embody himself, in a sense to realize and fulfil him
self as Father and as divine love In the personal life
of his personal children. Now what we say of man
as the head of the creation we may say of the creation
Itself, which was recapitulated in Adam as its natural
head and Is to be recapitulated in Jesus Christ as its
spiritual and eternal Head. The whole creation Is

Relation of God and the World. 75
already, in its Idea and Intention, and Is predestined
to become actually as well as Ideally the living body
of the living God — the outward form and perfect ex
pression of his divine Logos, his personal Reason,
Wisdom and Word.
When In this way we Identify God and the
world and say that he is to fulfil or realize himself
In the world, which Is to become as It were an out
ward form and body of himself and not merely an
external and impersonal expression of his wisdom and
power, we do not mean that the world Is going to
become the Godhead or the Godhead the world. In
one sense he will become it and it will become he
but in another sense he wiU forever remain above it
and he and It can never be Identical. Christianity
expresses this distinction by teaching that that which
Is immanent and is noumenally, not phenomenally, re
vealed of God in the universe Is Beof, not 6 Gsof. It
is his Logos, his personal Thought, WiU and Word,
who Is himself to the extent of identifying him In per
son with the world but not himself to the extent of
making him Identical in substance with the world.
By Ignoring these distinctions In God and in the
mode of his presence In things and in men, pantheism
makes him and them identical. The world Is the
visible body and manifestation of him, of his divine
essence and substance, and not merely of his personal
thought and activity. The whole Godhead Is so in
and of as not to be also above and outside of the
worid of phenomena. While true Christian theism
sees God in Christ as not only Ideal humanity but
also the ideal cosmos or universe, pantheism can know

']6 The Ecumenical Councils.
him only as the actual world of things and men. As
Patripassianism saw the whole Godhead In the suffer
ing and dying Christ, a thought far from repulsive to
the heart and the moral sense If absurd to the rea
son and the understanding, so pantheism sees all of
God — the divine substance as well as activity : rather
indeed the mere extension or evolution of his sub
stance without conscious or personal activity — In the
world of actuality, in all that Is false, ugly and evil,
equally with all that is true, beautiful and good.
In all the thought of the world the Christian doctrine
of the Trinity is not perhaps the complete and per
fect but the only solution of these great and other
wise insuperable difficulties.
It might be felt that if the doctrine of the Trinity
solves any intellectual or moral difficulties it does so
by Introducing one quite as Insoluble and Incompre
hensible In itself. Theological science is perhaps re
sponsible for the fact that that which was Introduced
to explain has become itself most in need of explana
tion ; that a doctrine designed and calculated to make
God most comprehensible to us has ended by mak
ing him an Incomprehensible metaphysical abstraction.
It has come to be popularly assumed that the doctrine
of the Trinity is the abstrusest of human speculations
which the Greek mind at Its subtlest exhausted its
ingenuity In devising. On the contrary If we could
return to the simplicity and Intelligibility of Its orig
inal meaning and intention we should find exactly
the reverse. To begin with, the Trinity Is primarily
a fact and not a doctrine. And It is a fact which
alone brings God down to our apprehension and Into

The Truth of the Trinity. 'j'j
our experience. That God reveals himself to us in
his personal divine Word and imparts himself to us
by his personal divine Spirit Is the basis of all Chris
tian knowledge of God. That we are baptized Into a
vital relation to him as Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
a threefold relationship in which he Is born In us .and
makes us his children not only by nature or generation
but also by grace or regeneration, — In which through
participation in the Sonship we are brought into
realization and enjoyment of the Fatherhood and fel
lowship of the Spirit and nature and Hfe of God — this
was the Trinity as It existed first in the church. It
was not the doctrine but the living and life-giving
truth In which they had their whole spiritual being
as Christians. It was as we have said the meaning
and reality of their baptism that — taken not by sign
merely but In fact into the divine Sonship now
reaUzed for all men through the humanity of Jesus
Christ — they were In relationship with the Father as
the source and with the Holy Ghost as the grace and
power of an actual new Ufe from heaven. It was the
meaning and reality of that sacrificial and sacramental
feast In which they perpetually commemorated and
celebrated their new relation to Father, Son and Holy
Ghost, and converted the once-for-all union Into a
living and abiding communion and fellowship of Ufe
and love. It was their one confession of the common
faith out of which, as the simple baptismal formula,
grew up those creeds In which simple statement of
fact became developed doctrine and definite dogma.
The Trinity was thus to the primitive Christians
simply the form in which God had come to them

78 The Ecumenical Councils.
and had taken them into union and fellowship with
himself. It existed for them as an objective reality
about which It was long before they began or were
willing to reason or speculate. That Jesus Christ
was God who became one with us and has made us
one with himself they received without question and
without scientific thought of the tremendous mystery
Involved. That the divine life of which they were
conscious in him was the personal life of the personal
Spirit of Christ and of God who now dwelt in them
as the body of Christ and of his own incarnation in
humanity was a fact so actual to experience that, as
with all things that are matters of fact, there was no
thought of explaining or justifying It to the reason
or the understanding.
So long before there was anything like a rational
theology In the church aU Christians were simply
and unreasoningly Trinitarian. It was very easy for
them. If they attempted anything Hke definite state
ment or formulation of their faith, to fall into confu
sion and contradiction. The few that boldly speculated
were apt either to go astray or at least to fall short
of the whole truth, which only the most comprehen
sive catholic thought can embrace In aU its aspects
and bearings. The church at first was Trinitarian
simply because the truth is Trinitarian and because
it accepted the truth as It was objective to Itself and
had not yet converted it into subjective knowledge.
That this had to be done, that there had to be formed
a subjective consciousness of the church correspond
ing to the objective form of the truth, Is manifest ; and
It Is equally manifest that that could only be effected

Piety versus Speculation. 79
through manifold mistakes and corrections, through
much high thought and deep experience, and not
without strife and contention and stirring up of other
Interests and motives than those to which the gospel
of God ought alone to appeal.
There is abundant evidence to prove that the
Christian mind was slow and reluctant to make the
truth as It is in Jesus the matter of rational explana
tion and interpretation. Having to do with spiritual
facts and experiences It was In the beginning wholly
averse to speculation. The tremendous speculative
activity of the second century that went under the
name of Christian gnosis was as we have seen not
Christian at all but came whoUy from without, having
no real spiritual Interest or religious experience In
Christianity. But it was directed upon the facts and
truths of Christianity and could not but awake and
provoke Christian thought to meet and refute Its mis
representations and perversions. None of the earlier
heresies that arose within the church were primarily
speculative ; Ebionism was the reverse and Sabellian
ism accepted the Incarnation of God literally without
appreciating the speculative difficulties that neces
sitated the doctrine of the Trinity. When the abler
and more thoughtful minds of the church like Irenseus,
TertuUian, Clement of Alexandria and Origen began
to be driven toward the construction of a rational
and catholic doctrine ofthe Trinity they had to en
counter a mass of conservative piety to which the
appUcation of such methods as pertain to natural and
secular knowledge to the truth of God seemed pro
fane and irreligious. The definitions and scientific

8o The Ecumenical Councils.
formulae forced at last upon the church by the Arian
controversies were both In and after the Council of
Nicasa resisted more by conservative obstruction than
by speculative disagreement. It Is characteristic of
every one of the councils that Imperial pressure, in
the interest of reUgious and civil peace and order, had
to be exerted heavily to force the church to define her
self at all or to add new definitions to those already
made and accepted. That the formulation of Chris
tian knowledge and doctrine did unquestionably elicit
and employ an amount of dialectic skill and of meta
physical and scientific acumen and acuteness which
the world has never seen equalled either for quan
tity or quaUty is not to be denied. But so far as It
all was theological and Christological, in the sense of
being religious and Christian, it was purely defensive
and compulsory. So far as It was merely speculative
and disputatious It was not Christian but human and
Greek. Even In that age, at least until politics and
heresy and controversy had perverted and corrupted
the public Christian mind of the East, Christianity
preferred the demonstration of the Spirit to wisdom
of thought or speech. Before the First General
Council aU the decisions of the Chrisrian conscious
ness however expressed were negative rather than
positive — In condemnation of what was inconsistent
with the objective truth as it knew It rather than
efforts to express Its own subjective knowledge of the
truth. Every church had Its public confession of the
common faith as a necessary part of its reUgion and
worship, but Infinite and even timid caution was ex
ercised to keep this simplest statement of Christian

Primitive Thought of the Trinity. 8i
fact true to what It had been in the beginning and
was everywhere and among all.
If now we should venture to express the primitive
and objective fact of the Trinity as it existed prior to
the formulation of the doctrine or to the compulsory
and necessary awaking and activity of the theologiz
ing mind of the church, we might express It or ex
plain it somewhat as foUows. To the rehgious mind
of the church there were three great facts or processes
in which and In which alone It knew or could know
God : first, in the natural creation and preservarion of
all things ; second. In the incarnation and atonement
or the spiritual and moral new creation of humanity in
Jesus Christ ; and third, in the presence and operation
of the Holy Ghost and the powers of the world to
come In the church and the souls of believers.
With regard to the natural creation we have seen
how instinctively Christianity preserved a straight
course between a deistic separation of God on the one
hand and a pantheistic Identification and confusion of
God with it on the other. Just as soon as in St. Paul
or St. John or wherever else In the Scriptures or In
catholic thought the higher or preincarnate aspect
of the person of Jesus Christ is dwelt upon, he is im
mediately brought into relarion with (i) the natural
creation or origin of aU things and (2) the end or
consummation of all things. It is he through whom
aU things are and It Is he in whom aU things are to
come to their natural and predestined end and- com
pletion. Who then is he or what, whom the church
from the beginning has seen with the eyes not of
sense but of faith under the human form of Jesus

82 The Ecumenical Cotmcils.
Christ? We wIU endeavor to answer this question
somewhat in the order of thought or conception In
which the truth may be supposed to have originated
and been developed in the mind of the church.
Perhaps the very first Impression calculated to be
produced by even the most natural and human study
of the person of Jesus Christ is that of the universal
ity of his humanity. He Is man to every man, the
manhood of every man In the world. There Is no
human being from highest to lowest who may not
see In him the meaning, the truth, the divine Idea and
purpose, the true conception and end of himself. It
Is not merely that he bears the common nature and
has lived the common life and shared the common
experiences of every man. He is Infinitely nearer
than that ; he Is the true human personality and the
Innermost human self of every man. Every human
being knows himself and becomes himself only In
Jesus Christ. There are many Individual human rea
sons but every human reason finds and fulfils Itself
only In union and unity with the one universal rea
son. There are many human wiUs but each one of
them finds its freedom and attainment only in the
one perfect will. There are many men, there Is only
one manhood ; and he who does not find that in the
divine-human love and self-sacrifice and hoUness and
life of Jesus Christ wiU not find it at aU. So Jesus
Christ Is God's truth and word to every man of him
self — .not only of God's self, but of every man's self.
For the true, better, higher, eternal, divine self of
every man, that selfhood which it is the Infinite and
eternal aim of every man to realize and attain, is God.

Primitive Thought of the Logos. 83
It Is in this sense that Jesus Christ may be said to
be the Logos, first of all, of man. He is man as the
personal Godhead Is personally reaUzed In him — rea
son of his reason, will of his will, the very self of his
selfhood or personality ; and yet so that human free
dom and personality are not lost but found and ful
filled in that of God. It Is an Insufficient account of
the incarnation to say that God assumed our nature.
He became ourselves, and first In that universal hu
man selfhood or personality of Jesus Christ who is
the Inner and new personal manhood of every man
who finds him and finds himself in him. Nothing
less but a great deal more than aU this Is necessarUy
contained in that instinctive and primitive Christian
consciousness which led men to seek and find them
selves " in Jesus Christ," not as Instead of themselves
but as their true and real self, in whom they were re
deemed and fulfilled.
More than all this, the first mind of the church saw
in Jesus Christ the divine Logos not only of human
ity but of the whole creation also. Through him
and for him were all things made; he is both first
and final cause of the whole creation as a unit. The
natural and what is, at least misleadlngly, called the
supernatural world or order are not two but one.
One Logos, that Is to say one divine thought and
purpose, one law, one creative or self-fulfilling pro
cess runs through aU. The natural creation, what
we might caU universal evolution, comes first to its
meaning and truth In rational and spiritual humanity ;
the rational and spiritual in man will find and com
plete itself in the divine humanity of Jesus Christ.

84 The Ecumenical Councils.
The one only Logos of God, first In nature and then
In grace, first In natural and then in spiritual crea
tion, fulfils himself through all and in all. The Christ
of the future is the goal and crown of the entire
creation of God. Then and there, where Creator and
creature shall be one, God shall be all and In all. He
will have fulfilled himself in all things and all things
in himself.
Thus the primitive and genuine Christian mind
does not set itself against or above nature and the
natural. The so-called supernatural means only the
higher natural to which the natural is predestined to
come. The time wUl be when the science of nature
will complete Itself In the science of that supernature
which is only not yet nature because as yet we fore
know It only by faith and know It not by sight.
When we know it by sight It will be seen to be
natural and our knowledge of it will become science.
He then who as Incarnate is in the church and in
each regenerate soul as the Inner and divine self it is
predestined to become. Is he also who is In every
human reason and conscience and who is In Irrational
and inanimate nature as its ideal principle and law.
That there is an ideal principle — a principle of Intel
ligence, will and purpose, of love and goodness —
in aU nature and natural evolution may not be de
monstrable from nature itself and may have much In
nature apparently to contradict it. Yet the deepest
natures feel it, the highest Intelligences see it, and the
sinful and suffering human heart believes It In spite
of its sin and suffering. To the Christian reason,
conscience, experience, which sees the profoundest

Nature and the Supernatural. 85
exhibition of the love of the divine Father In the
very cross and agony of the Infinitely and divinely be
loved Son, there is no longer a mystery of evil. It
Is the cross that raiseth us ; the pain of the world is
the lever by which God lifts us to himself. The cross
that exalted Jesus the Son of God to the right hand
of the Father Is the Christian assurance that God and
love are at the heart of all natural so-called evil ; that
there Is no evil but sin, whose essence Is Ignorance
and unbelief of God and love.
Here occurs a point that may iUustrate If not ex
plain in advance much of what Is to come. If there Is
such an ideal principle In nature as we are speaking
of it is there in and as nature and not outside of and
beside It. It is an ultimately true principle that there
are no miracles in nature. If nature is God's work,
God does not work outside of it; he works in and
not upon it. If there Is a Logos of natural evolution
or creation It may be God's, it may be God ; but it is
also nature's and nature. The two must be one and
not two. Faith may see It as God, science can and
must see it only as nature. God Is and acts in noth
ing whatever otherwise than in the being and acring
of the thing itself. Faith is of him ; science is only
of the thing. There Is the same unity, conrinulty and
connection in things that there is In God and science
must as much recognize It under the form of natural
necessity and the universal reign of law as It is neces
sary to believe Its existence In the divine nature.
So if we are to think of a Logos or divine personal
principle of spiritual and moral crearion, of human re
demption and completion. If we are to think of God

86 The Ecum,enical Councils.
as Incarnate In humanity, we must think not only of
him as incarnating himself In humanity but also of him
as incarnating himself in humanity. He must not
be beside or instead of it or act upon it from with
out ; he must be in it and must be it and his acting
In it must be its own acting. When God shaU have
Incarnated himself in a redeemed and completed hu
manity it must equally be a humanity that has in
carnated in itself the living God. It will be God who
has so fulfilled himself in man ; but he will not have
done so unless It is also man who has so realized him
self in God. It will be both and yet both wIU be not
two but one.
The case becomes more difficult but it also becomes
more practicaUy important, because on account of its
difficulty it is more liable to misconception and mis
representation, when we come to study the personal
incarnation of God In the man Christ Jesus. The
point is that while we see in him a divine person we
must see him only In and as a human person. The
whole incarnation of the divine Son of God is a divine
act, an act of God. But If it Is an incarnation and If
It is to redeem and exalt humanity it must be an act
in and as man and not beside, through or Instead of
or in a mere form or semblance of manhood. It is
an act of God but It must be equally an act of man
or else man is in no way redeemed and completed In
it. The difference and difficulty in this case Is that
whereas in nature we see the Logos of the universe
operating In and only in laws or a law which Is the
law of nature, and in what we might call the generic
Incarnation or the Incarnation In humanity we see the

Absoluteness of Our Lord's Hmnanity. 87

Logos of humanity manifesting himself In and only
in the actual redemption and completion of human
ity, when we come to the particular Incarnation in
Jesus Christ the one person of our Lord is both the
Logos who Incarnates himself In a human person and
the human person In whom he Is incarnate. It is per
fectly true to say that our Lord assumed an Imper
sonal human nature but It Is not true to say that he
was impersonal In that nature or that as man he was
not a human person and had not aU the characteris
tics and limitations of a human personality. If he
had not he was not a man and lived no true human
life and Is for us no real human righteousness and
life. We hope to realize more and more as we pro
ceed that It was the eternal divine nature and pre
destination of the Logos through nature and through
grace to become man — to become as we have said
before not only alike in nature but one In person
with every man. St. Paul was not content to say,
"Christ was a man like me;" he says, "Not I but
Christ: /"live no longer; Christ lives In me." It is
the personal human Christ who, because he Is the
eternal divine selfhood of us, comes to himself In us
and brings us to ourselves In him. But If the human
Christ Is divine, the divine Christ In himself. In his
Incarnate person or personality and not merely in his
nature or purely natural attributes. Is human. He is
man, the man, the infinitely human, infinitely divine
personal manhood of every man ; the man in whom
every man finds and becomes himself. And In order
to be this we must believe that he became man in
accordance with aU the laws and attributes of a real

88 The Ecumenical Councils.
manhood, through a real human birth. Infancy and
Ignorance, growth In knowledge, wiU and character,
faith and obedience, holiness, righteousness and Hfe.
It was the becoming human of the Logos in the flesh
of sin and death and the human 'conquest and con
demnation In it of sin and death ; in other words it
was the triumphant hoHness and life of the man Christ
Jesus — a holiness that abolished sin and a life that
destroyed death — which constitutes him the new man
in whom objectively all men have been made new and
who in all men subjectively makes them new.
Thus In Jesus Christ the church from the very first
recognized the divine personal principle both of nature
and of grace, the meaning, end and purpose of the
whole creation. He is the eternal mind, will and ac
tivity of God revealed in all things, everywhere one
and the same. He is the truth of the atom, of motion,
law, life, of the soul, of human and divine reason, the
world, man, God. If he is God he is also man and
nature ; he Is the unity of God with nature and man.
Therefore while the church identified the Logos,
Incarnate and preincarnate, with God, for reasons
already given It also distinguished him from the God
head as a whole. ¦ The Logos is Geof but not 6 Geof ;
he Is the personal intelligence, will and energy of God
and Is really or essentially God ; but he Is not so God
as that the whole Godhead Is expressed In nature or
Incarnate in Christ and humanity. So again when the
church was conscious within itself of the Holy Ghost
as the Spirit and presence of Christ and of God, It
was compelled to distinguish him from them even
while It identified him with them. There was prac-

Christian Pantheism. 89
tically, with Inconsiderable exceptions that will be
mentioned, no denial of his divinity ; there was, with
perhaps greater exceptions, no considerable denial of
his personality. The true Christian consciousness
knows no operation. Influence or presence of God that
is not God himself; whatever is divine is personal, Is
God. To it nature Is God, events are God, every
thing is God save those finite spirits to whom In the
free will God has given the power to be other than
himself and even contrary to himself. So grace Is
God, not an Impersonal, dead Influence separate and
apart from him, but he himself become human and
so capable of becoming as man to every man. The
personal Word by the personal Holy Ghost Is In every
one who Is living In him and is In them redemption
from sin and life from death. So In himself, in Jesus
Christ, and in Itself the church knew God as Father,
as Son and as Holy Ghost, and was Trinitarian in
fact before it became so In thought and doctrine.

CHAPTER V.
THE ORIGIN AND RISE OF ARIANISM.
HERE is probably no heresy that had
not something of serious motive In its
origin and that did not aim to defend
or preserve some element of truth and
value. We might be more disposed to
question this of Arianism than of any other form of
early Christian errOr. It seems to us now at least to
have so little basis of philosophical probabiUty or pos
sibility, its spirit at the time was so merely logical
and controversial and so little religious, It was so
ready and quick to avail itself of political and secular
methods and Instrumentalities and its general temper
and character as shown In its most conspicuous leaders
and representatives were so unchristian that we are
tempted to see in It neither seriousness of motive nor
interest for truth. So far as it had a religious interest it
must be found in Its theology, not in its Christology.
An Incarnation of what Is not God in what Is not man
has nothing In it of the reality and truth of the Chris
tian faith or fact of the divine incarnation and can
carry in It nothing of the Christian experience of
atonement with God, redemption from sin and res
urrection from death. On the one hand Arianism
90

Theological Motive of A rianism. 9 1
pushes the distinction between the Incarnate Son and
the eternal Father to the point of denying the essen
tial divinity of the former, and on the other hand
the lower, created and not truly divine person who
according to it became incarnate assumed only a
human form, body and animal soul, but none at all
of the higher functions and parts of a real humanity.
Its religious interest therefore must be found in
its theology and most probably In that truth of the
divine being and nature that we have alluded to
as the monarchia, the unity of God as the principle
{apx^i) of the universe. Sabellianism and Arianism
iUustrate the opposite directions in which one and the
same theological interest may seek to maintain itself.
The motive of both Is Monarchlan, but while Sabel
Uanism defends the unity of the divine principle by
denying any real distinction in it and makes Father,
Son and Holy Ghost one in person as well as na
ture, Arianism attains the same end by widening
the distinction of persons into one of nature and so
attributing real divinity and original causation only
to the Father. The genealogy therefore of Arianism
Is to be sought In the history of that Eblonite Mon
archianism which we saw to be Jewish In Its origin.
We have seen also how after the teaching of Theo
dotus and Artemon it appeared in its most conspic
uous form in that of Paul of Samosata, metropolitan of
Antioch, to whom, through Luclan and the Lucianists,
Bishop Alexander attributed the origin of the heresy
that broke out under him In Alexandria about the
year 3 1 8 In the person and teaching of the presbyter
Arius.

92 The Ecumenical Councils.
Such was the direct descent and origin of Arian
ism ; yet there is no doubt that from without It was
developed mainly through antagonism to its opposite,
Sabellianism. As against this latter many of the
church fathers were driven to Insist in very strong
terms upon the distinction of the persons in the divine
Trinity, — so much so that the distinction was some
times expressed in language which if taken literally
would seriously compromise if not destroy the iden
tity of nature. If words used by them be interpreted
in the sense and with the technical exactness which
they acquired through the long discussions that
followed, Origen himself, the ablest of catholic an
tagonists of the principle of Sabellianism, and sev
eral of his greatest followers — as Gregory of Neo-
Caesarea and Dionyslus of Alexandria — might be
justly charged with this. Athanasius and the later
church fathers recognized the fact that such errors
of expression arose from personal inaccuracy and
natural ambiguity of language and not from unsound
ness of faith, but nevertheless the expressions were
seized upon and pressed into the service of errors that
In part had grown out of them and one or more of
the writers themselves were thus made actuaUy re
sponsible for the heresy of Arianism — with which
they would have had in fact not the least sympa
thy. Thus Origen, one of the earliest as weU as
ablest contributors to the development of the doctrine
that was formulated afterward In the term "homoou
sion," identity In nature or essential divinity of the
Father and Son, used language in emphasizing the dis
tinction between Father and Son against the then

Need of an Exact Terminology. 93
emerging principle of Sabellianism which as terms
were afterward defined would imply not the difference
of personality that he meant but difference of essence
or substance — which was just what he did not mean.
And in teaching what was on the whole a catholic
sense of the natural subordination of the Son to the
Father, beside other ambiguous expressions he termed
the eternal Son tJEvrspof Ge6f, a term that the Arians
adopted and interpreted to mean that the Son, whUe
he may be caUed God, Is so only In a secondary and
lower sense than the Father and so really and es
sentially Is not God at all. SimUariy Dionysius of
Alexandria, Intent only upon a refutation of Sabel
Uanism and careless of error In the opposite direction
— for Arianism was as yet unborn, though of It his own
inaccurate expression was after said to be the seed, —
used language that ImpUed that the Son was not
"born," as he meant, but " made" of the Father, which
he did not mean, and which was developed Into the
Arian teaching that the Son of God Is a created being.
Other church fathers are quoted not sparingly as using
In one generation and from one point of view terms
and expressions which in a succeeding generation and
from other points of view are discarded or condemned
as heretical. We must remember the natural ambigu
ity of human language and how unexpressed and In
expressible the church had held those spiritual things
to be that were the matter of Its faith rather than Its
knowledge. As It became necessary more and more
to define the faith so as to purge it of its perversions,
it had only a language which, although the most per
fect in the world, was undeveloped In the direction of

94 The Ecuntenical Councils.
the tiew world of Ideas and truths that Christianity
had opened. A phraseology had to be adapted If
not created and then, what was more difficult,
adopted by common consent in an agreed sense. In
order to do this the church had to select the best or
most available words, to separate them from all vague
and shifting popular senses and uses and stamp upon
them a technical and perhaps arbitrary limitation and
exactness which they were very far from possessing
of themselves; and then it had to bring itself to a
universal consent and agreement to use them only
In that sense or at least to understand them in that
sense when used in definition of the faith. Thus the
two crucial and vital terms finally adopted in definition
of the Trinity — the term " ousia" meaning the essence
or " substance " of the divine nature In which Hes
the unity, and the term " hypostasis " expressing the
personal distinction that constitutes the Trinity in
the Godhead — might have been used and were ac
tuaUy sometimes used before the Nicene CouncU
succeeded In fixing their meaning In senses just the
reverse of those adopted; that is "ousia" was used
for personahty and not essence or substance, and
" hypostasis " was used for essence or substance and not
personahty. And it is easily enough explained how
this ambiguity belonged to them in themselves. The
church Indeed was intent on things, not words; it
reluctantly reduced the things of the Spirit to words
at all and If it was compeUed to devote an infinitely
minute and subtle attention to the adaptation and
definition of words It was because it had new and
high and infinitely Important things to express and

Outbreak of the Heresy. 95
had to create, although out of existing materials, a
language In which truly and adequately to express
them. We can readily understand thus how while
Athanasius and the Nicene church fathers saw the
truth in what was meant by the church teaching be
fore them, the Arians could also see In much that
had been said In that same teaching the suggestion
and substance of their own heresy.
In this way catholic antagonism and Sabellianism
with its opposite tendencies to Patripassianism and
Docetism had unwittingly habituated many minds
within the church to such wide distinctions between
the Father and the Son as gradually to prepare not
only the thought but also the very language that at
last found heretical expression In Arius. The circum
stances of the outbreak of the heresy are too familiar to
require narration in detail. The issue arose between
Arius, a leading and Influential presbyter, and his
bishop Alexander. It secured through the popular
qualities and methods of its founder a following among
the common people of Alexandria. But Its Intellec
tual and theological extension was not there but In the
patriarchate of Antioch whence Its seeds had been
brought and where It found a more natural and con
genial home.
A proof that the real interest and motive of Arian
ism Is not Christological but theological, that it was
a question not of the value and significance of the
person and work of Jesus Christ but of the nature
of God, and that its essence is to be found in a
deistic conception of God which separates him most

96 The Ecumenical Councils.
widely from both nature and human nature, from the
world and humanity, is to be found In Arlus's own
earliest representation of his contention with his
bishop. He addressed to Eusebius of NIcomedIa,
who was soon to become the real intellectual head
and controlling spirit of the movement, the following
complaint : "The bishop fiercely assaults and drives us,
leaving no means untried in his opposition. At length
he has driven us out of the city as ungodly for dis
senting from his public declarations that ' as God is
eternal, so is his Son; where the Father Is, there Is
the Son; the Son coexists In God without a begin
ning ; ever generate or born, or born without begin
ning; that neither In Idea nor by an instant of time
does God precede the Son ; an eternal God, an eter
nal Son; the Son is from God himself.' . . . These
blasphemies we cannot bear even to hear; no, not
though the heretics should threaten us with ten thou
sand deaths."
We must remember that with Arius as with the
church Jesus Christ was the Logos of natural as
well as spiritual creation through the incarnation.
He was as far from beUeving that God Immediately
created or Is connected with the natural world as that
he is Incarnate In Jesus Christ. The point of his whole
position was that God is too exalted and transcendent
to be related to the universe except through an in
termediary. He who came so near as to mingle
himself with the world or who so humbled himself
as to become Incarnate In man could not be the most
high God himself. The very thought Is such blas
phemy that to bear even to hear It Is worse than ten

Tenets of Arianism. 97
thousand deaths. Consequently the Creator of the
worlds, he who became Incarnate In the Ufe of hu
manity, was not Geof, as St. John says, or only so
in a secondary and apphed sense, devrepbg Qsog. He
was a being between God and the world of nature
and grace, immeasurably higher than it but infinitely
lower than he. He was born of God, Indeed the
only-born or begotten and so alone In the highest
sense Son of God, and through him God created the
world and redeemed and completed humanity by
making him man. But he was only-begotten In the
sense that he alone came immediately from God's|]own
hand whereas all things else came from God through
him. He was not begotten or born or Son of God
In the real sense that makes him In the mind of the
church God of or out of God and so of the very
essence or " substance " of the Father, but only in
the figurative sense in which everything that comes
from him may be said to be born of him although
Infinitely and essentially different In nature. In other
words he was not born or Son of God at aU but pro
duced by a crearive act " out of nothing," not as
the church believed by necessary and eternal gener
ation from himself. The Logos was thus a crea
ture, created indeed before all others and even before
time Itself, for time Is one of the creatures, but only
differing from them in that, as has been said, he
came alone from the hand of God himself and was
the Instrument of their crearion. The Arians indeed
turned the very fact of his Sonship or birth of
the Father, which to the church meant that he was
God of God, into an argument against his deity. It

98 The Ecumenical Councils.
contradicted they said the two very first predicates
of the divine, which are that It is underlved and eternal.
"That which was born, was not before it was born;"
we must therefore be able to say even of the only-
begotten of God that Jiv nore ore 6vk r)v ; " there was "
— not a time, for even time was not then — but " there
once was when he was not." And as the Arian Logos
possessed not the two first so he possessed not any
of the real attributes of Godhead. He was not om
nipotent, omniscient, or anything else that God alone
infinitely is.
The Nicene Council charged against Arius beside
the above another heretical tenet from which in the
controversy he thought it at least wise to recede.
This was the position that the Logos In himself and
not merely as man, beside being not eternal and not
of the divine essence or nature but created " out of
nothing," was not drpenTog or dvaXXoiurog; that Is,
was not incapable of change or of falHng, as Satan
one of the highest of created beings had done. He
himself was under probation and by his triumphant
virtue and righteousness on earth restored and estab
lished the world of men. His Sonship was not one
of nature or essence but of freedom and choice, a
personal and moral, not proper or essential one. It
was quite a secondary and subsidiary part but it
was a real part of Arianism that this secondary God
who was not God, this divine Son of God who was
neither Son of God nor divine, became Incarnate In
a humanity which was not humanity. The bodily
or material part was alone human ; the rational and
spiritual, which is alone essential and real manhood

Denies both Godhead and Manhood. 99
was in this man not that of the humanity but of the
higher incarnate person. So that the earthly life and
experiences, sufferings and death of Jesus were no
more those of man than they were of God. They
were those of a demi-god, demi-man, who was
neither God nor man and who from the Christian
point of view was neither able to save nor needing
to be saved. It Is clear that apart from a merely
theoretical or theological zeal for the transcendence
of a God who can neither touch nor be touched by
anything outside of himself Arianism Itself could have
had no real Interest at all in such an Incarnation. In
fact aU In it beyond the barest monotheistic deism
on the one hand and the barest Ebionitic humanlta
rianism on the other, — that is, all that the grand and
compUcated system of Arianism proper had to add
to a simple humanitarian Ebionism, — was nothing but
a compulsory concession to the Irresistible Christian
demand for a human Incarnation of God and a divine
redemption and completion of man in the person of
Jesus Christ. In response to this Arianism pretended
to give both and gave neither. In aU the tremendous
discussion there was nothing on the Arian side either
said or thought of the spiritual or religious needs of
man or of the self-imparting love and grace of God,
nothing reaUzed of that profound necessity which Is
the meaning and truth of aU religion, that Infinite
love must fiU and fulfil aU things with and In itself;
but everything of a God whose very nature It is to
hold himself eternally aloof from all things else, a
God whom In his Isolation and selfish transcendence
it is as absurd for one like Arius to so concern himself

lOO The Ecumenical Councils.
about as to prefer ten thousand deaths rather than
hear of his soiling himself by contact with us, as It
Is absurd to think of his condescending to concern
himself about so doing.
The true value of Arianism was negative ; It acted
as a foil for the truth In that bringing out in itself
aU that Christianity is not it forced the church to
bring Into consciousness and expression all that it
is. And this was only to be accomphshed by real
izing as fully the real and perfect deity on the one
side as on the other side the real and complete hu
manity of the Incarnate Son of God — both of which
Arianism denied. With the first of these denials the
church for a long time was exclusively concerned;
the second remained In the background, and was
scarcely recognized as a part of Arianism. But we
shaU see that just as soon as the first was thoroughly
disposed of and settled In the first two general councils,
the second came forward to be met and dealt with at
even greater length and with more trouble In all the
subsequent general councUs.
If we turn for a moment from the negative to the
positive, from the Arian to the catholic side of the
speculations, so far as they have gone, upon the rela
tion of Jesus Christ to God, It Is well known that
that relation was expressed in two designations, the
Word or Logos and the Son of God. Each of these
titles had in controversy an advantage and a disad
vantage that rendered them according to the point at
issue more or less available and so made sometimes
the one, sometimes the other the more prominent.
On the whole however it wIU be seen that they

The Catholic Doctrine. loi
were complementary and came to be used to em
phasize the opposite aspects of the one truth. The
relation of the divine Son to the divine Father
was In the church as In the Scriptures expressed by
the term " begotten " or " born " and more precisely
"only-begotten." In fact this relation If it were
not expressed would be necessarily Implied by the
titles Father and Son, If used in earnest. What pos
sible real relation can Father and Son bear to each
other but that of begetter and begotten ? Now just
this most primary and essential of catholic terms,
which was supposed to express the real divinity of
the Son, God of God, was as we have seen selected
as the basis of the Arian attack upon the catholic
truth expressed by It. If the Son was born or be
gotten, before he was begotten he was not and
so was not eternal. The answer had been given
long before the objection was made, first and chiefly
by Origen, and was already in the possession of the
church. It was In the form of the church doctrine
of the " eternal generation " of the Son, which meant
not only that the divine Son was once for all begotten
In or from eternity, so that there was never a time when
he had not been begotten, but also that he is of or from
the Father by a continuous and necessary process
of generation coeternal with himself, because of his
nature and not merely of his wUl or act. The best of
several illustrations in common and famUIar use was
that of the sun which by the very fact of being the
sun did not once for aU at the beginning generate
but forever of necessity generates its radiance. The
sun, although it generates or begets, could never

102 The Ecumenical Councils.
have been before or without its radiance. We might
say, " Where the sun, there Its radiance ; the radiance
coexists in the sun without any beginning from it;
neither In idea nor by a moment of time does the
sun precede Its radiance ; the radiance is of the nature
or essence or substance of the sun ; and so on indefi
nitely." In Identical language the church expressed
the eternal generation of the Son and so his coeternity
with the Father; an answer certainly to the Arian
contention that If he was born there must have been
a time before he was born.
Not only the coeternity of the Son is thus vindi
cated but also the essential identity of his nature with
that of the Father. For in generation the Father
reproduces himself and not anything else Jn the Son ;
not indeed his personality but at least his own na
ture and not another. So that we must say of God,
not only where the Father there the Son, but what
the Father that the Son. The Arians, driven from
other points, took refuge In the one attribute of aseity,
in which they concentrated the whole nature of God.
It is the distinctive nature of God to be underlved
or to come from himself alone (a se). A God derived
from another than himself by generation or otherwise
is not God. They were only determined to maintain
that he who Is Identified with the world by creation
or with the lowliness and weakness of humanity by
incarnation could not be the most high and only God.
With the church however there was the very differ
ent and even more imperative necessity to Identify
whUe distinguishing the incarnate Son and the unin-
carnate Father. And in this the fathers learned by

Logos and Son. 103
gradual experience the opposite values of the terms
" Logos" and " Son" as emphasizing If not exclusively
expressing, one of them the Identity, the other the
distinction. The Logos on the one hand, the divine
reason and Word, the wisdom, will and energy of
God, might if taken alone be thought of as an Im
personal attribute, faculty or function of the Godhead,
but it cannot be thought as ever having been wanting
to it: God could never have been without self-ex
pression or active will, and so his Logos is coeternal and
necessary part of himself, of his very nature and [,be-
ing; while on the other hand the term " Son " must of
necessity mean the reproduction and repetition of one
self in another self between whom and the first there
must be some distinction. If on the one hand the term
"Logos" alone were used it might be said that the
divine Word, energizing in the natural creation and In
carnating itself in the spiritual, need not be personally
distinguished from the single personal Godhead; If
on the other hand the term "Son"' only were used
the distinction might be pushed, as by the Arians, to
the disruption of the essential identity of the persons
distinguished. But If the incarnate one is both Logos
and Son he must be both essentially Identical with
the Father and personally distinct from him. This
was afterward In Nicene language expressed by the
phrase " God of God " ; as God he was one with the
Father, as of or from God he was distinct from
the Father.
Returning to the term " begotten," the church
always recognized different senses and acts In which
It might be appHed to the Son of God. As Logos of

I04 The Ecumenical Councils.
the natural creation he might be said to have come
forth from God in the birth or coming Into being of
the natural creation. He was begotten or born Into
humanity In his birth of the Virgin. And In his hu
manity he was begotten anew when humanity in his
person was born through his death and resurrection
into the Sonship to which It had been eternally pre
destinated. But the church would never admit that
he who came forth from the Father in the birth of
the natural creation had not previously existed from
eternity in the bosom of the Father, both as Logos
and Son, both one with and distinct from him ; and
this Is what was intended to be expressed by the
doctrine of the eternal generation.
When driven to make some distinction between
the Father and the Son the SabeUians had admitted
a temporal but not an eternal distinction. They said
that the Logos was eternally contained in the one
personality of the Godhead, but in time, in the tem
poral acts of creation and incarnation, he became
distinguished and was then called Son as begotten of
the Father in those acts. But in reality he was still
the Father, only to be distinguished from him as
a different manifestation of himself from that In
which he Is Father and not Son. On this line some
SabeUians avoided Patripassianism by falling on the
other side into a sort of higher Ebionism, teaching
that it was not the Father himself but only a virtue
or energy of the Father that was Incarnate In Jesus
Christ. Thus the SabeUians held an economic but
not an essential Trinity, a Trinity of temporal mani
festations but not of eternal persons. Against all

Constantine the Great. 105
which tendencies the church erected the doctrine of
the eternal generation as its bulwark and defence.
What gave Arianism a vitality as well as a prom
inence and importance that it would never have
acquired by Itself was the accident of its civil and
political power and Influence. Just when the contro
versy was well under way in Alexandria the first
Christian emperor Constantine the Great was by his
victories over his colleague LIcInlus making himself
sole master of the Roman empire and so of the world.
It was not Arius and his associates but Constantine
and his successors that lifted the Arian discussion
into a world-wide and historical significance such as
attaches to no other heresy.
There can be no question of Constantine's title to
the cognomen of " Great." The victorious career
that made him sole emperor and gave him a secure
and powerful empire and reign, proved him a great
general. The cIvU administration that reorganized
the empire under a new constitution and marked a
new epoch if not revolution in Its internal history
was evidence of his greatness as a statesman. But it
was Constantine's pohcy In reference to Christianity,
even though we regard it as nothing more than policy,
that constituted his chief claim to greatness. It is
useless however to deny his sincere and profound
interest In Christianity. It may not have been In the
truest and deepest sense a personaUy reUgious Interest,
and It certainly was not such as morally to transform
his character and Impart to him the spirit and Ufe of
the founder of the religion he professed. And yet
even' here judgment belongeth not unto us ; he be-

io6 The Ecumenical Councils.
came a Christian late, in the midst of evil and violent
times, and in possession of almost absolute and irre
sponsible power. We do not know the fuU secret of
his worst crimes such as the execution of Crispus and
others of his own household or how much domestic
strife, unhappiness, misrepresentation and intrigue de
ceived and darkened his judgment and apparently,
as It seemed to him, necessitated his actions. Again,
it may not have been a very profound or correct
theological interest which Constantine felt in Chris
tianity, though that may exist in the absence of one
truly spiritual and reUgious. He certainly estab
lished no claim to being a theologian and yet It
was no mere vulgar or poUtical pretence that he
made of being such ; he was sincerely Interested,
and no doubt at times thought himself one. What
he said most impressively in public that was theo
logically true and sound was said perhaps at second
hand, and he said much also that betrayed his igno
rance. But he had honestly made Christianity his
cause and himself its most illustrious and exalted
patron and champion and he was deeply and ear
nestly concerned about It and anxious to represent
and further It Intelligently and wisely.
Herein was Constantine's true greatness In the
matter. He had by his military genius unified the
empire and was by his political genius reorganizing
its internal administration. But he was great enough
to perceive that what he could do in this way from
without was not what the world he was dealing
with most needed ; that it was all nothing and would
come to nothing without a moral and thereto a

Sincerity of his Policy. 107
religious reconstitutlon of individual and personal
life and character and of general society. He was
the first of the emperors to perceive that old things
were passing away and that there was but one thing
in the world that was new and capable of renew
ing it. The old reHgions had had their day and
lost their power and he had not the folly of his
nephew JuHan to suppose that new life could be
breathed into old bodies. Philosophy had outgrown
its faith and become critical and sceptical and no
longer exercised any positive and constructive Influ
ence, and scepticism in thought, as soon as It becomes
general or universal, is corruption in morals and dis
integration In personal and social life and order. As
in material things integration Into masses Is depen
dent upon the forces resident in the elementary atoms
that compose them, molecular attractions, repulsions,
affinities and such like, so does society depend upon
the vitality of the spiritual and moral forces resident
In individuals, and what social Ufe is public Ufe
and politics and the state Itself will be. No matter
how political his motive there Is no possibility of
doubting, at first at least and for a long time, the
Emperor Constantine's concern for the moral and
even spiritual reform of private character and social
life in his empire. It has been remarked. In speaking
of the failures as well as successes of his personal
policy : " Nevertheless we must give him credit for
a sincere desire for moral reform and confess that
henceforward there was a marked increase If not In
nobility of character at least In outward respectabil
ity of conduct." He may have succeeded only so far

io8 The Ecumenical Councils.
as the outward respectability of conduct, but If he
failed to base this upon the deeper nobUity of charac
ter It was not because he had not aimed to build on
this, — as to lay this too In the one foundation of a
true faith as well as a pure moraUty.
Constantine was then the first mind at the head of
the world's affairs to realize what Christianity might
be to the social and political life of an empire whose
vital forces were spent, whose internal bonds dis
solved, and which was rapidly undergoing corrup
tion and hastening to destruction. As an actual matter
of fact Christianity with all its human intermixture
of weakness and failure was the salt that saved
the world, that in the disintegration of the old sup
plied the principle and power of a new integration
of personal, social and political life and rendered
possible if It did not Itself create the new civilization
which calls itself by its name and Is dated froiri its
birth. And Constantine was the first of the rulers of
the world to recognize this and summon it to Its
high mission and destiny. He did not expect too
much but he expected It too Impatiently and was
disappointed at not finding it Immediately all that he
had hoped. Perhaps It was his disappointment in
Christianity that Is responsible for much of what so
disappoints us at last in him as a Christian. Alas !
Christianity lives and acts, Is known and judged
only through us and has to carry the weight and
bear the blame of all we are, and so always to human
vision fails or faUs short of what Is expected of It.
Nevertheless In God's time and way It accomplishes
that whereunto It is sent. We shall see that Constan-

Gradual Approach to Christianity. 109
tine looked for a united church and a united empire
and world as the immediate result of the CouncU of
Nicaea. The immediate result was exactly the re
verse ; the church and the world were plunged into
a state of confusion and strife out of which he saw
no hope in his lifetime of the peace and tranquiUity
of which he had dreamed and for which he sighed.
Just this period of his life, succeeding the council, was
marked by the greatest vacillation In his own attitude,
religiously and theologically, and by his worst ex-'
cesses and crimes. If he sinned more than others
against the religion he had so conspicuously professed,
it may be in part at least because he expected more
from it and was more than any other deceived and
disappointed by it.
More or less predisposed In Its favor by Inheritance
from his father Constantius, who had steadUy main
tained an attitude of tolerance and kindness toward
It, Constantine's actual approaches to Christianity
were very gradual. Whether drawn to it In greater
proportion by policy, by superstition or by an en-
hghtened InteUigence and faith, the process in Itself
by which he was brought was both a rational and
reUgious one. When in the year 312 he had the
vision of the labarum and inscribed upon his banner
the monogram of Christ, however we may explain
the facts or however little he may be proved to have
known of Christ at the time, we cannot resist the
conclusion that it was, in accordance with the Inscrip
tion upon the triumphal arch erected in Rome to
commemorate his victory, " instinctu divinitatis," by
an instinct of divinity that he was moved to place

IIO The Ecumenical Councils.
himself and his cause under the auspices and bless
ing of the hitherto despised and persecuted religion
which was predestined to the conquest of the world.
Christianity had as much to do with his success as he
with Its future triumphs. On the lowest ground of
superstition, the heathen gods were no longer a name
to conjure with; their power was gone, and the very
soldiers of Licinius felt their Inferiority and disad
vantage in still offering to them sacrifice and worship
in the face of the opposing labarum which was every
where become a talisman of victory.
By a succession of edicts the Christians were in
the year 313 for the first time in the enjoyment of a
complete toleration throughout the empire. Constan
tine was beginning to interest himself in the internal
affairs and disputes of the church and very soon had
forced upon him that policy of interference in them
which was to grow up Into the alliance of church and
state that has ever since played such a part In the
history of both. However impracticable it might be
In Itself and however unequal he proved to the task
of carrying it out, there is no denying him from the
beginning, in connection with their relation to each
other, an Idea and pohcy that had in It elements of
both goodness and greatness.
In his civil administration Constantine strove un
successfully to combine two principles which were
both strong In him but which it was difficult to har
monize. The first was a real regard in theory at
least for the rights of individuals, of private life and
natural society ; we have spoken of his zeal to
animate and reform these as the only basis of pub-

His zeal for Unity and Uniformity. 1 1 1
He or national strength and prosperity. The other
was a passion for organization and order, not only
for unity but also uniformity. He wanted the em
pire and for this end he wanted the church to be
one and Identical throughout. The chief thing that
had attracted him to Christianity was Its claim and
essential nature to be a bond of perfectness capable
of making and destined to make all things one. He
saw in its unity and universality an Instrument for
welding together the discordant elements and parts
of the empire and the world. The Idea and poHcy
of his Hfe are weU expressed in a letter to Alexander
and Arius on the subject of their dispute, and nothing
can better show the mind and attitude of Constantine
at just the point of time at which we have arrived.
"Two principles," he said, "had guided his actions:
the first, to unify the beUef of all nations with regard
to the divinity into one consistent form ; the second, to
set In order the body of the world which was laboring
as It were under a grievous sickness."
In his zeal to promote unity in the church, Con
stantine vacillated between the two Impulses or dispo
sitions of which we have spoken, at one time inclined
to leave matters to their own natural working and
to respect the rights of individual opinions and choice,
at another undertaking to enforce agreement and
consent by the pressure of legal dIsablUties and pen
alties. Neither seemed to succeed and It was without
doubt the disappointment of his life that he could
not make Christianity and through It the body of
the worid one and sound and so save It from its
grievous sickness.

112 The Ecumenical Councils.

As far back as the edicts of toleration, the stipu
lated condition of Its toleration was that Christianity
should be one thing, undivided by heresies and
schisms. But Constantine's personal Interference
with the faith as well as internal order of the church
began against his will and protest when he was
forced by pressure from both sides to arbitrate in
the quarrel between the Donatlsts and Catholics of
Carthage and North Africa. To decide it he assem
bled the almost ecumenical Council of Aries in the
year 314. And so was established the precedent that
was followed by the much more serious personal In
terference of the emperor In the more difficult heresy
of Arianism, and at the greater Council of Nicaea.
When the Nicene CouncU had completed Its
labors with apparent unanimity and success Constan
tine assumed that the matter was settled and the
world would be at peace. When a few resisted the
pressure brought to bear on them and were still
recalcitrant, in his Impatience he attempted to force
them into agreement, was willing to proceed to the
extremest penalty, and did inflict that of banishment.
Then, seeming to realize that spiritual unity and har
mony could not be effected by material compulsion,
he reverted to the opposite poUcy of concUiation, made
friends himself with Arius, was persuaded by his ad
herents that he was really not as unsound as he had
been represented, and Insisted upon Athanasius tak
ing the same view and restoring him to communion
and to his former position in Alexandria. Athanasius
refused and while still maintaining the decrees of
Nicaea Constantine began to find himself more and

Failure of Constantini s Policy. 1 1 3
more acting with the Arians against the church. By
degrees he succumbed to the wiles and fell under the
Influence of Eusebius of Nicomedia, the ablest and
most unscrupulous of the Arian party, by whom the
last offices of religion were rendered him at his death.
So Constantine's policy of unity and uniformity In
church and state came to an unsuccessful Issue and
we shall see that under his successors the faUure grew
to tragical, almost fatal dimensions and, humanly
speaking, all but made shipwreck of Christianity by
making the church and the world wholly and hope
lessly Arian.

CHAPTER VI.
THE COUNCIL OF NIC^A.
HE conception as well as the realization
of the idea of an ecumenical council must
no doubt be conceded to Constantine. He
was on the way to It when he summoned
the synod at Aries, to which St. Augus
tine afterward appealed as a universal one, and he
accomplished It at Nicasa. He himself said publicly,
" God it was on whose suggestion I acted in summon
ing the bishops to meet In such numbers;" and the
council at its close declared that " it was by the grace
of God and the piety of the emperor In assembUng
us that the great and holy synod came together."
It was not of course that there had not been local
councils to meet local exigencies, but there was a
long step between these and the conception of the
church as the church, the body of Christ, coming
together as an organic whole, to bear testimony to
Its common faith and to give expression to its corpo
rate life. This does not mean of course that either
Constantine or the council fully realized at first the
significance and Importance of the gathering. There
was always in the church an instinct and sense of Its
unity as a single body under a single Head, as the
114

Note of Ectimenicity. 115
one bride of the heavenly Bridegroom, as the unity
of Christians not only with Christ but also with one
another in Christ. There was always the claim of an
organic, common, corporate faith and life. In distinc
tion from the more or less Incomplete faith and life
of Individuals even doctors and saints. But the Idea
of a corporate or catholic utterance or expression of
itself through a gathering so truly representative of
its whole or corporate self as to make it the voice of
the church had not yet fully entered Into Its mind.
There Is every evidence of tentativeness and of only
a growing certainty and confidence in Itself pervading
the council; and of course the final verdict of ecu
menicity or of its having actually given expression to
the general mind came only with the subsequent
experience and consent of the church that it had
done so.
The records are exceedingly few ; they are limited
to what was at last agreed upon and subscribed, and
this includes only the creed, twenty canons and a
synodical letter. Most of our information of the
proceedings comes from the later correspondence of
Athanasius and of Eusebius, and as these two were
not altogether of one mind, as we shall see, their
Impressions and accounts do not always agree. As
most convenient for illustrating the main business of
the councU, with which we are chiefly concerned, we
will consider successively In all their relations to it,
(i) the Emperor Constantine, (2) the Arian leaders,
(3) the representatives, Uke the historian Eusebius of
Caesarea, of the conservatives or party of compromise,
and (4) the positive and thoroughgoing catholics.

1 1 6 The Ecumenical Councils.
like Athanasius, bent on bringing the discussion to
some decisive conclusion and action.
I. Constantine had entered with deep concern Into
the troubles of Alexandria which threatened to en
danger the unity and peace of Christendom and of
the empire. His first feehng was one simply of
amazement and Indignation that the representatives
of Christianity should excite such discord and risk
such consequences upon such slight differences. He
was unable to see any cause for so bitter a contro
versy and writes to Alexander and Arius, urging
upon them the insignificance of the issue between
them, and entreating them to withdraw their mutual
charges and restore quiet and tranquiUity to the
church and to himself. The letter and the mission
of restoring harmony were Intrusted to Hosius, bishop
of Cordova In Spain, who had for some time been
the emperor's closest friend and adviser In matters
religious and ecclesiastical. When Hosius returned
unsuccessful and no doubt better informed himself
upon the true nature and importance of the Issue
dividing the parties, the emperor began to take a
deeper and more serious view of the situation. There
were at the time three issues disturbing the church,
the old paschal controversy which had come down
almost from the beginning as to the day on which
Easter should be celebrated, the Meletian schism, a
local and purely practical quarrel which had been
going on for some time in Egypt, and now this Arian
heresy which, arising it may be said somewhat ac
cidentally In Alexandria, was soon shown to have
had its real roots farther east in that Antlochian school

The Emperor and the Council. 117
of Luclan of which Arius was a disciple. Combining
these three questions in the common motive of an
ecumenical or world-wide unity and order which
always actuated him, the emperor began his prepa
rations for assembUng the great council. He wrote
letters to all the bishops Inviting and urging them to
meet with aU speed at Nicasa; he himself provided
conveyances and other facilities for their journey ; and
he made every preparation for their welcome and
entertainment. The sessions were held In a large
church In the centre of the imperial palace. After
a number of preliminary and informal discussions, in
which much of the ground was laid for the subsequent
formal action, the council being duly convened the
emperor appeared and took his seat. The address
of welcome and of thanks to him from the council
has been variously ascribed to Hosius, to Eustathius
of Antioch, to Eusebius of Caesarea, and to Alex
ander of Alexandria, who either personally or from
the Importance of their sees were the leading bishops.
The bishop of Rome, prevented by age and infirmity
from attending, was represented by two fresbyters.
The emperor as always made a great impression by
" his stately presence, lofty stature and gentle and
even modest demeanor." He claimed for himself In
his reply the position of a feUow-servant among those
whom he was addressing ; and In urging upon them
unity and unanimity, he enforced his exhortation to
peace and harmony by producing a sealed packet of
charges and complaints which had been preferred to
him against many of themselves, and publicly throw
ing them into the fire. " You cannot," he said, " be

ii8 The Ecumenical Councils.
judged by a man like myself; such things as these
must wait tUl the great day of God's judgment. Christ
has advised us to pardon our brother If we wish to
obtain pardon ourselves."
In the regular discussions at several critical points
he took a personal part. We might judge from
Eusebius that when the latter had proposed his form
of a creed it was the emperor who after approving
and praising it moved to amend by the Introduction
of the crucial word " homoousion." At this time, per
haps as a result of his deeper study of the question
with Hosius, he acted with the catholic party ; and
Eusebius declares that his explanations and arguments
had convinced himself and removed his scruples and
objections to the term. On the whole however. It
is plain that the emperor exerted no undue pressure
upon one side or the other of the question. His Inter
est and Influence did unquestionably It might be said
even force the council to express itself, to formulate
the faith of the church ; but with the form which that
expression took he did not interfere. He seems to
have adhered to the principle expressed by him years
before when he had angrily repulsed the appeal of the
Donatlsts to him from the decision of the Council of
Aries. "They demand," he had said, " my judgment,
who myself expect the judgment of Christ. The judg
ment of bishops ought to be accounted as if God him
self was sitting on the tribunal. " But when the bishops
had spoken, and spoken with a practical unanimity,
he assumed that the whole matter was forever closed
and did not hesitate to exercise all of his personal
influence and his Imperial authority to enforce the

The Arians in the Council. ii0
decision. It Is not improbable indeed that his ex
planations and advocacy of the homoousion were
based not on his own very intelUgent comprehension
of that term or deep religious interest in it but upon
the fact that the preliminary discussions had revealed
the mind and Intention -of the council to Impose it.
The council was drawing to a close when, on July
25, A.D. 325, the emperor invited all the bishops to
a great banquet In commemoration of the twentieth
anniversary of his accession to the empire. The In
ward unity, harmony and joy that pervaded aU minds
at the happy consummation of their labors, as well
as the outward glory and splendor of the entertain
ment suggested to the minds of the plain bishops
the thought of a foretaste of heaven.
2. The Arian leaders had come to Nicaea full of
confidence and hope. When expelled from Alex
andria Arius had found among his fellow-disciples of
Lucian In the East very able and powerful supporters ;
he boasted that aU were with him except a few he
retical and unlearned men. Eusebius of Nicomedia,
an imperial city, led the extremer party; but the
more moderate and orthodox Eusebius of Caesarea,
the most learned man of the age, represented a large
section which, while not agreeing with Arius, had
nbt discovered anything dangerously heretical in his
teaching, and so expostulated against the harshness
of his treatment. Arius therefore came to the councU
counting on a support powerful In ability and not
Insignificant in numbers. In the preliminary discus
sions he was fully drawn out and did not hesitate to
present his whole case. After the formal opening his

I20 The Ecumenical Councils.
opinions were examined In the presence of the em
peror, and the Eusebians undertook his defence and
justification. It was immediately made apparent that
the overwhelming weight of sentiment was against
him, and as the discussion proceeded the number of
his avowed sympathizers dwindled down to a very
few. A letter of Eusebius of Nicomedia, which had
perhaps been used as a campaign document, was
laid before the council, as also a formal confession of
their faith. These on being read were rent in pieces
and the party was accused of having betrayed the
truth. After this the only question for the Arians
was to what extent they could escape utter condem
nation and other penalties secular as well as rehgious,
or on the other hand how far they could bring their
consciences to accept the action of the council and
remain in the communion of the church.
3. When Arianism had been so summarily disposed
of, Eusebius of Caesarea and the conservatives or
party of compromise came to the front. They had
previously thought Arius hardly treated, but fell in
now with the condemnation of his opinions as hereti
cal and blasphemous. They had a creed to propose
Avhich would unite all parties, even the Arians, who
could all have signed it. It was scriptural, and It
accorded with all the traditions and confessions of
faith of all the churches. It was in fact the creed
in use in Euseblus's own native and see city of Caesa
rea, and as it is a good sample of the creeds in use
in all churches prior to the Nicene Council, as It was
also the basis of the creed for the first time Imposed
on the whole church by that council. It may be well

Conservatives in the Council. 121
to give It as it originally stood. And it may be safely
affirmed that, although up to this time each church
had its own confession of faith, all based upon the
baptismal formula, there was no church In Christen
dom whose creed did not substantially accord with
this of Caesarea. Eusebius, In his report to his church
of the action of Nicaea, writes as follows :
" Our own form then, which was read in the pres
ence of the emperor, and appeared to be right and
proper. Is expressed in these terms : As we have re
ceived from the bishops who preceded us, as we have
been taught in the rudimental Instructions of our
childhood and when we were subjects of the bap
tismal rite, and as we have learned from the divine
Scriptures ; as we have beUeved and taught, both In
the order of presbyter and in the episcopal dignity
Itself, and as we now beUeve, we present to you our
profession of faith. And It Is this: We beUeve In
one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things
visible and Invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Word of God, God of God, light of light, Ufe of
life, the only-begotten Son, the first-born of every
creature, begotten of the Father before all ages, by
whom aU things were made; who for our salvation
was made flesh, and lived among men, and suffered,
and rose again the third day, and ascended to the
Father, and shaU come again In glory to judge quick
and dead. We beHeve also In one Holy Spirit ; be
lieving every one of these to be and subsist, the Father
truly the Father, the Son truly the Son, and the Holy
Spirit truly the Holy Spirit; as our Lord when he
sent his disciples to preach said, ' Go teach aU na-

122 The Ecumenical Councils.
tions, baptizing them In the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.' "
After Eusebius had read his proposed creed, which
was received with entire and universal assent and
approbation, there was a pause and then began the
real Issue between the only two actual parties In the
council. It was perfectly well understood that the motive
and intention of the conservatives was not merely
to present an unexceptionable confession of faith in
which the whole church might come to a uniform use,
but to stave off the discussion and decision of a con
troversy which they were afraid to face. Beyond
the mere immaterial advantage of a literal uniformity
in their public confessions, what would be gained by
the adoption of Euseblus's creed ? Everybody would
have accepted it and continued just as he was ; the
Arians would have signed it and been Arians stUl;
nothing whatever would be decided by It. The claim
for it was that it was the language of Scripture, and
of the traditional faith; the issue made was that It
was wrong and unwise to use a language outside of
these to express or explain divine truth. But the
question was not what Scripture and tradition said —
they were all agreed on that; but what Scripture and.
tradition meant, upon which they disagreed. You
cannot Interpret and explain Scripture by simple
quotation or repetition of scriptural language or ex
pressions, but only by the use of other terms by
means of which they might be defined and iUustrated.
Euseblus's creed was therefore all right as far as It
went; but it did not go far enough even to touch.

Athanasius and the Catholics. 123
much less solve, the real difficulties of the meaning
of Scripture and tradition which were dividing them
and which were the reason of their coming together.
4. The thoroughgoing catholic party was thus
brought forward and took up the true business of the
council. If ever In human history there was a man
divinely raised up and endowed to meet and deal
with a special emergency It was Athanasius. He
had spent some years in the household of Alexander,
and there before Arius had given utterance to his
heresy and when he was scarcely more than of age,
had produced his great work upon the nature of the
Incarnation, " the first attempt that had been made
to present Christianity and the chief events of the
life of Jesus Christ under a scientific aspect." The
peculiar qualifications and special preparation of
Athanasius have been generally recognized and rep
resented somewhat under the following heads :
A Greek, born and reared in Alexandria, the " em
porium for the exchange of the ideas and speculations
as well as the products of all climes," he was not only
himself endowed with speculative capacity of the
highest order but also grew up in daily contact with
every existing form of rehgion or phUosophy, and
was an observer, student and thinker from his earU
est youth.
At the same time he was before aU and most of
aU a student of the Scriptures, and none of his ad
versaries or antagonists could surpass him In love for
these or reverence for their authority. Having to
stand for freedom from their mere letter, he was a
true interpreter of their mind and spirit.

124 The Ecumenical Councils.
In addition, he was certainly behind none of his
contemporaries In acquaintance, sympathy and ac
cord with the thought and Ufe of the church before
him. CaUed, as he was to be, to stand for the
church not only against the world but apparently
against Itself, he was able to stand alone, until he
could recall and restore it to Itself, and reestablish the
divine tradition of truth.
Finally it was not the least providential circum
stance of the career of Athanasius that his very youth
when called Into the arena left him a long lifetime In
which to labor and to suffer for the principles which
none of his contemporaries but himself could have
brought to their final and permanent triumph ; and
that for this he was endowed with not only the in
tellectual and the spiritual but also with the practi
cal and moral qualifications necessary to carry him
through so intense and protracted a strain.
It has been said of Arius that he possessed very
highly the logical and dialectical but was devoid of
the Intuitional faculties. It was just in these latter
that Athanasius was strongest. " It was," says Dor
ner, " his intuitional perception of the Redeemer in
his totality that marked out for Athanasius the direc
tion which he ought to pursue." But this intuitional
perception of the Redeemer in his totaUty requires ex
actly a combination of all the above qualifications, a
mind at once spiritual, scriptural, catholic, and in the
highest sense rational and practical.
Athanasius was a year or two under thirty, and
only a deacon, when he accompanied Alexander to
Nicasa. There Is no telling to what extent he had

Arius and Athanasius. 125
already been the Insplrer of his bishop In the contro
versy with Arius, and he went thoroughly armed and
furnished for the fray. It Is very certain that In the
preliminary discussions he quickly took the leading
part, and there must have been moments when the
Issue narrowed down to a duel between the arch-
representatives of the opposing causes, Arius and
Athanasius. Pen-and-ink pictures of the great pro
tagonists have not been wanting. There was a dif
ference of forty years between their ages. Arius was
tall, serious. Impressive, Insinuating In his bearing and
manners ; a dialectician and politician, but. In appear
ance at 'least, of no mean or vulgar type. He had
certainly the arts of mental reservation and dissimu
lation, and employed "them later; but on this occasion
undue confidence perhaps led him ^to be outspoken
and open enough. Athanasius was small, — a mere
" manikin " the Emperor Julian caUed him later. In
derision, — and with the slight stoop of a student
but with a beautiful face which was compared to
that of an angel. He went to the council nominally
as the private secretary of his bishop, in reahty as
the controlling spirit and genius of aU its pro
ceedings. Throughout these " he was by no means,"
says Neander, " contending for a mere speculative for
mula; ... it was an essentially Christian principle
which actuated him." His entire feeUng and motive
is expressed in his own simple words, " Our contest
Is for our all." The party, of which he was the real
If not the nominal leader, seems not only to have care
fuUy arranged beforehand their policy which was
carried through with great moderation, wisdom and

126 The Ecumenical Councils.
skiU ; but also to have adopted and made up their minds
to abide by the crucial term which was destined to
become the very effectual test of Christian orthodoxy.
They began by giving the Arians full time and scope
and even encouragement to expose and so refute and
ruin themselves. Then they listened with deference
and approval to the conservatives and let it be clearly
seen that they had no desire or reason to antagonize
them, as Indeed there was no Issue with them except
upon the policy of so defining and interpreting the
common truth as to make It clear that they were
agreed as to its meaning and not merely as to Its ex
pression. When Eusebius had read and proposed his creed,
it was no one of them, who might have created an
tagonism on the other side, it was the fair-minded
and impartial emperor himself whom no one could
accuse of partisanship, who commended the fornjula —
but proposed the sole and simple amendment of the
Insertion of the term " homoousion." At any rate It
was the emperor who in a speech so defined the
term and explained away its real or apparent diffi
culties as to convince the learned Eusebius of its
innocence and gain his consent, and perhaps that
of many others, to its adoption. No doubt It was
Hosius who had prepared the emperor for this im
portant part, but the pardonable design was . to ac
complish in peace and harmony what the discerning
emperor saw by this time that the real minds and
wiUs of the council had come with the determin
ation to accomplish. It might be said that with
out the aid of the emperor the homoousion could

The Creed of Nic^a. 127
never have been passed through the council. That
may be, but It Is very certain that, with the aid of the
emperor, no other real definition could have been
passed. The providential use throughout of the im
perial power In all the councils seems to have been
that It acted as an external compulsion upon the
councU to say something, to come to some real de
cision. And when It had to do that, as a rule It could
only agree upon that which was true; truth alone
unites, error only hopelessly confuses and divides.
And there was the additional safeguard that no coun
cil stood alone and only stood at aU if it was In har
mony with other councils and with the world-wide
and age-long mind of the whole church.
When the Ice had been broken by the aid of
the emperor other amendments followed, under the
cumulative effects of which Eusebius saw his creed
quickly transformed from what had been only an in
strument of truth Into so effective an offensive and
defensive weapon against error that it has never since
been possible to improve it. The creed as it came
from the Council of Nicasa and before it received Its
final form at Constantinople was as follows:
" We beUeve In one God, the Father Almighty,
maker of all things both visible and Invisible ; and In
one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of
the Father, an only -begotten — that Is from the es
sence (or substance, " ousia ") of the Father — God from
God, Ught from light, true God from true God, be
gotten, not made, being of one essence (homoousion)
with the Father; by whom aU things were made,
both things in heaven and things Obn earth ; who for

128 The Ecumenical Councils.
us men and for our salvation came down and was
made flesh, was made man, suffered and rose again
the third day, ascended Into heaven, cometh to judge
quick and dead; and In the Holy Spirit.
" But those who say that ' there was once when
he was not,' and 'before he was begotten he was
not,' and ' he was made of things that were not,' or
maintain that the Son of God Is of a different es
sence, or created, or subject to moral change or altera
tion — these doth the catholic and apostolic church
anathematize." In the body of the creed proper the vital additions
were the following : Whereas the Arians had used the
term " begotten " in the secondary or Improper sense
of created or made, making no distinction between
the generation of the divine Son and the sense In
which even the natural creation Is called the off
spring of God; and teaching that he was only the
first begotten or made, and made of the mere will
of the Father out of nothing; the creed affirms that
he was begotten, not made ; not out of nothing, or of
things that were not, but of the ousia, essence or
substance, of the Father, and so was personally
homoouslos, or of identical essence or substance
with the Father. Moreover as against the false an
thropology, as well as theology, of the Arian con
ception of the incarnation, to the article " was made
flesh" it adds "was made man," meaning that our
Lord took flesh not merely in the sense of a human
body but in aU that constitutes a true and complete
manhood. The difficulties. Inadequacies, and positive disad-

Necessity of Definitions. 129
vantages of such definitions will be done full justice
to In the sequel; at present we shall dwell a little
upon the necessity of them. Athanasius was as free
as any one to regret the necessity of employing terms
neither scriptural nor theological but physical and
metaphysical In the definition of spiritual and divine
mysteries; and he fuUy admitted not only their in
sufficiency but their danger. Others before him had
regretted and yet had not been able to avoid the
same necessity ; neither human thought nor human
language can represent to perfection the truth of
things divine ; we can only approximate it by ex
pressing as well as we may the truth of things in
visible In terms, which are all that we have, of things
visible. When therefore we say that the Son of
God is homoouslos, of one essence or substance with
the Father, we are fuUy aware that our own natural
and even material associations with the word " ousia "
are very apt to mislead In the application of it to
the purely spiritual and incomprehensible being of
God. But what are we to do ? We have no divine
language and can only think and speak with the
symbols and In the terms at our command. The
one thing Athanasius knew and wanted to state in
language exact enough, technical enough, definite
enough to guard against any evasion or diminution
or perversion of it, was the simple primal Christian
fact of not only the very humanity but the very per
sonal divinity or deity of Jesus Christ. He summed
up and embodied In himself the whole Chrisrian
consciousness that aU of God and all of man were met,
united and consummated in the aU- reconcUing and

130 The Ecumenical Councils.
all-completing personal work and exaltation of Jesus
Christ. As a matter of fact that great essential
Christian truth had from the beginning been re
peatedly subject to misinterpretation on both sides.
Within the church itself the use of scriptural and of
ecclesiastical and catholic language and the repeti
tion of true confessions of faith had not saved
doctors and even bishops from attaching imperfect
and false meanings to the very central article of Chris
tian belief and Ufe. This had culminated in the
unscriptural, unchristian. Irrational, and irreligious
teaching of Arius, held and defended under the
very forms and as the true meaning of Scripture and
catholic tradition. The time was surely come when
it was necessary for the church to define beyond the
possibility of misunderstanding at least the vital and
distinctive and essential principle of Christianity.
We have repeatedly said that at this juncture the
doctrine of the person of Christ was under considera
tion on Its divine and not as before and after on its
human side ; and the whole dogmaric affirmation of
the Nicene Council was contained in Its Insistence
upon the one word " homoousion." And aU that was
meant by that was that Jesus Christ was God, In no
lower or secondary or different sense from that In
which the Father is God; that the incarnation was
an act of the divine personal presence and operation
In human nature and human Hfe. Not indeed in
the sense that the whole Godhead or divine selfhood
was contained in Christ, and yet that God was him
self and not by any mere Impersonal virtue or in
fluence in him.

The Arguments of Athanasius. 131
It has been remarked that while we have no rec
ord of the arguments actually employed by Athana
sius at the council in 'defence of the real divinity of
our Lord, we can easily gather what they must have
been from his letters and other writings ; and that
they may be reduced to four heads, which we will
briefly develop.
In the first place the Scriptures : by which we do
not mean the explicit statement of particular passages
merely, but that whole mind and meaning of the
Scriptures which exhibits Jesus Christ to us as a per
sonal revelation of God himself and not only an im
personal something from him.
In the second place it is involved in the very no
tion of that unique and real Sonship which the church
ascribes to him alone, and which cannot mean any
thing less than that he receives from the Father the
essential nature of the Father, which must therefore
be In him as In the Father eternal, and of equal
majesty, glory and power; with the sole difference
that the Father as father Is underlved and the Son
as son is derived, but eternaUy so — after the analogy
of the sun and Its effluence.
In the third place it Is required by the very mean
ing of an absolute religion, of the divine grace and
self-Impartation and of human redemption and salva
tion. If Athanasius possessed, as we have attributed
to him, that intuitional spiritual faculty which makes
the spiritual man a judge of spiritual things, as spiritual
things are the test of the spiritual man, we shall ex
pect to find In him not a mere dependence upon the
external authority of Scriptures or tradition, which

132 The Ecumenical Councils.
need themselves to be Interpreted and therefore un
derstood, but the possession of that spiritual criterion
by which the church as a whole through the true
representatives and leaders of its thought and mind
is the judge and Interpreter of revelation and tradi
tion. He appeals accordingly, as we find, to the
universal Intuitive perception of the truth of God and
man, and what must be the meaning of their absolute
and ultimate relation to each other In Jesus Christ,
if there is to be in him a real divine-human reconcilia
tion and atonement.
Finally, In the fourth place, the doctrine of the real
divinity is actually that which has been the teaching
of the church from the beginning, whatever may have
been the private opinion of Individuals. So that reve
lation, the intuitions ofthe spiritual reason and catholic
agreement and consent are all at one on the essential
truth of Jesus Christ.
Under the pressure of the emperor to come to
some definite conclusion and decision, under the skil
ful guidance of Athanasius, under the power of the
truth alone to unite and harmonize diverse minds and
tendencies, above all under the controlling provi
dence and by the indwelling and helping Spirit and
grace of God, the council was brought to a practi
cal unanimity of action. Of the three hundred and
eighteen bishops who according to the traditional
computation composed the council, there were only
two or three at the last who refused to sign the creed.
The emperor accepted the result as Inspired and ban
ished the recalcitrants along with Arius, and so mat
ters for the moment were settled.

Result of the Council. 133
We do not dwell here upon the settlement of the
long-standing paschal or Easter controversy, which
practically closed the diversity of use that had divided
East and West on that point.
The Meletian quarrel was decided against the schis
matics, but it was no more dead than Arianism and
soon revived along ¦ with the latter to give more
trouble than ever to the church.
The emperor wrote happy and confident letters to
Alexandria and to all the churches, in which he de
clared that the power of Satan had been thwarted,
and that the splendor of truth, at the command of
God, had vanquished the dissensions, schisms and
tumults which Invaded the repose of the church and
the empire. " We aU therefore believe that there is
one God and worship In his name."

CHAPTER VII.
ARIANISM AFTER THE COUNCIL OF NIC^A.
HE events succeeding the Council of
Nicaea are so complicated and confused
that it is difficult to combine anything
like a philosophical interpretation of them
with a detailed narration of even the
principal incidents. We shall limit ourselves there
fore to such details as are actually necessary to indi
cate or Illustrate the onward progress of the matter
which we have In hand, the evolution of the doc
trine, as distinguished from the truth or fact, of the
person of Jesus Christ.
If there had been only the reUgious question reli
giously discussed and determined, the task of tracing
Its solutions and definitions would be comparatively
simple and easy; but unfortunately at this point
Christianity itself, through its sudden elevation to
the position of the state reUgion, becomes hopelessly
mixed up and almost lost In such a seething mass of
political intrigue and personal and partisan animos
ity that it Is scarcely possible to trace the real Issue
through all to its safe emergence at last. And yet,
perhaps, except through this admixture and interac
tion with earthly elements and forces the heavenly
134

Testimony Prior to Reflection. 135
truth would not have emerged at all. God In many
ways makes the wrath and the folly of men to praise
him. If we should abstract our attention from the selfish
and worldly motives and ends that Identified and
mixed themselves up with the very genuine and
profound Christian thought and Hfe of the times,
and direct it only to the religious forces at work, we
might describe the crisis as follows. A momentous
question — the momentous question of Christianity —
had been submitted by the church to a general coun
cil and the council had decided it. But the question
was not therefore decided ; the council had judged
the question. It remained for the church to judge the
council. In a certain sense It might be said that so
far as the council itself was concerned, taken as a
whole, and still more so far as the church as a whole
was concerned, the action of the CouncU of Nicaea
was not yet its deliberate judgment and decision.
The fact is, leaving out a very few commanding indi
viduals, for the church the council was the beginning
rather than the end of reflection; and we might
almost say of It that It spoke first and reflected after
ward. So far as the voice of the councU was the
voice of the church — and we shall see that It was —
It was the first thought of the church that was ex
pressed and not, as it Is sometimes called, its sober
second thought. Not on that account was the ver
dict the less valuable, but on the contrary that fact
constituted Its peculiar value. We have seen to
what an extent the faith of the first Christian ages
was Intuitive and ImpUcIt, and how slow the great

136 The Ecumenical Councils.
body of Christians was to go beyond the confession
of Christianity as an objective fact of divine Incarna
tion and human redemption, and to trust itself to
that process of human and rational reflection which
would undertake to make the divine mystery hu
manly intelligible and expressible. It was humanly
speaking impossible that the church could have been
brought to utter itself as it did at Nicaea without the
Imperial pressure, amounting almost to compulsion.
Speaking then and thus, its utterance was more a
testimony or witness to the objective fact In which
it believed than an exposition of its own reflections
upon that fact. Its great reluctance was not to
make a catholic or universal confession of the person
of Christ, but to confess him in terms not revealed
and not scriptural, and apphcable rather to human
than divine things. Compelled however thus to
define the object of Its faith, it did so Immediately
and on first thought, with a clearness, certainty and
decision, of which It would have been more and
more incapable the longer it was allowed to reason
and reflect. Not that there was no place for reflec
tion and reason; as a matter of fact these, coming
after, came eventually to yield a subjective assent
and confirmation to the objective testimony borne at
once and at first by the instinctive or intuitive faith
of the universal Christian consciousness. But It was
the peculiar value of the Council of Nicaea that. In
the sense and to the extent we have endeavored to
describe, its decision was given at the beginning and
not at the end of the age of speculative reflection,
which it introduced ; and, in the words of Dr. Dorner,

Doubt and Reaction. 137
" We shall esteem it a special favor of providence
that the conscience of the church was appealed to
for Its testimony and confession while It stiU retained
Its [primitive] certitude and authority ; and that thus
at the very commencement of Its voyage, a beacon
was enkindled to mark the church's pathway across
the stormy seas which lay before It."
Thus it happened that, as our Lord himself coming
to bring the peace of God into the world brought
at first not peace but a sword, so the great Nicene
Council, convened to give unity. Introduced a strife
and discord such as had never been known In the
church before. Hitherto the great silent solid body
of Christian people was united without question by
faith in facts which they were as satisfied should
remain without and above them as children are sat
isfied not to understand the mysteries of birth and
life and growth. The church had Instinctively de
tected and rejected whatever was inconsistent with
its faith and life, but doctrinal Investigation and
speculation, all that we would now call theology,
was, as we have said, confined to very few and was
viewed with distrust as tending to disturb and darken
the simplicity of a faith the truth of which lay In the
fact of things without us and not in any reasonings
and deductions of our own. Now of a sudden, and
unexpectedly to the great mass of them, the simple
pastors of simple flocks were brought together from
the ends of the earth and made to give in language
above their comprehension a scientific or philosoph
ical reason for the faith that was In them. Made to
give their verdict as judges, they Instinctively raised

138 The Ecumenical Councils.
their voices and closed their ears against every form
of open or covert attack upon the true divinity of
their Lord, and so bore their testimony to the com
mon faith. Their spiritual sense had not lost Its
delicacy through too much thought and too little
life; they felt intuitively that the Athanasian posi
tion was true to their religious wants and their
Christian experience, as well as to the Scriptures
and the catholic tradition as they knew it; and so
they gave their adhesion to it and in the certainty
of their first and fresh convictions rejoiced to feel
that the Holy Ghost had spoken through them.
Even In the council, however, they had not been
brought up to this point without doubts and qualms,
without hesitation and reluctance. Their faith with
out knowledge had led them, and they had followed
it Uke Abraham not knowing whither they went.
And when the jubilation and enthusiasm over what
they had done was over and their elation had grown
cold, and their subtle and fine formulae and defini
tions came to be discussed and criticised over again
apart from the explanations which had made them
sound so true, they were by no means as sure as they
had been of the truth and value of their action.
It is certainly only In this way that we can explain
the almost universal and for a long time apparently
hopeless reaction that set against the council soon
after Its triumphant adjournment. It affected the
mind of the emperor himself and wrecked all the
shallow hopes he had built upon the sand of his
superficial acquaintance with the divine workings
of Christianity. And alone, or almost alone, and

Action of the Diflerent Parties. 139
against odds that It would be difficult to measure,
the great Athanasius set himself resolutely and pa
tiently to the task that was to take as many years as
the other had taken days, of bringing the church as
he had brought the council up to a comprehension
and knowledge of Itself. In the church as in every
Individual the passage from intuitive faith to rational
knowledge Is a difficult, painful and dangerous one.
Its path is through thought and doubt back to truth
and certainty, and It is not all who return again In
safety to the haven of faith from which they started.
We shall see how the church passed through it, and
we shall not pause to count the sad failures, the
faithless and shameful disloyalties and defections by
the way.
But, as we have said, the question of the religious
progress of the church's thought was complicated
with many others of which It is necessary to take
account. We must remember that during the time
when the imperial policy toward Christianity was
turning from persecution to patronage and men had
everything to gain Instead of everything to lose by
becoming Christians, the Immediate effect had been
to convert the church from a purely religious to a
very largely secular and political body. We shaU
expect therefore to find in even Its highest places
self-seekers, schemers and politicians as well as the
ologians, scholars and saints. Of the latter, in all
three characters, unquestionably the highest type
was Athanasius; and perhaps the various comphca
tions that distracted and impeded the church may
best be studied by considering them successively

140 The Ecumenical Councils.
in their relation to him as Its representative. We
shaU therefore, referring to him as a standard, pass
consecutively in review the subsequent conduct of
the several parties which had taken part in the pro
ceedings and almost all united In the conclusions of
the Nicene Council; and we shall begin with the
Inner circle of the Homoousians themselves, those
who had acted most closely with Athanasius, and
proceed from within outward.
The council over, and the larger task begun of
passing its decisions through the test of the universal
judgment, many of those most closely identified with
Athanasius, who had most distinguished themselves
In the battle for the homoousion, failed him In just
the way to be the source of the greatest weak
ness Instead of strength in the further trials of the
truth. A single instance will Ulustrate how this
not unnaturally came about. It had been /elt and
conceded by some of their strongest advocates that
there was danger lurking In the terms and phrases
employed to define and defend the truth. Many
sound but conservative and timid members had
been reluctant to sign the definitions on account of
perilous ambiguities to which attention had been
called in the debates. That the danger was a real
one was soon to be demonstrated by perhaps many
more instances than the conspicuous one we are
about to give. None of the bishops In the council
had been more forward or useful In defence of our
Lord's person against the Arians than Marcellus of
Ancyra in Asia Minor. Yet It was not long after
before he was convicted of holding the homoousion

The Conservatives. 141
itself in just that Sabellian sense of which the coun
cil had been afraid, and which It had charged as an
objection against the term. Worse than that, tried
and clearly convicted by one side In the subsequent
controversy, he was defended and protected by the
other side, including the see of Rome, because of his
services In the council ; and It was years before his
friends were forced by his conduct to give up his
cause as a bad one. The effect of such cases could
not but revive and deepen the distrust of the deci
sions which the Athanasians had found so much diffi
culty in overcoming in the council.
When we pass from the inner circle of the Atha
nasians to the very large next outer one of the great
body of conservatives, who were at bottom opposed
to the idea of a universal test at aU, who thoroughly
distrusted and feared the application of scientific
methods and language to the definition of divine
mysteries, and who In particular objected to the
special terms Insisted on by the Athanasians, but
who having to define could find no better or other
terms In which to do so and so had conformed, —
we shaU of course not be surprised to find these re
viving their scruples and fears, and becoming more
confirmed in them and doubtful of their previous
compUance, especially as these fears were most art
fully and skilfully played upon by the real anti-
Nlcene party. The leaders of the orthodox conser
vatives were in addition unfortunately all more or less
prejudiced against Alexander and Athanasius. They
did not appreciate the depth and danger of the Arian
heresy and had never sympathized with what they

142 The Ecumenical Councils.

regarded, in the length to which it was carried, as
persecution of Arius. With Eusebius of Cassarea at
their head, as before the councU so after It when the
personal contentions were revived they found them
selves, without being Arians, on the side of Arius
and the Arians and arrayed against Athanasius.
Eusebius of Caesarea, the historian of the church,
was without question the most learned man of the
age. In aU his voluminous literary and reUgious
productions nothing has been discovered to convict
him of unsoundness or lukewarmness in the faith.
The worst that could be charged against him was
that he was liberal or latitudinarian In his judgment
of the doctrinal differences of others; he was not
warm or strong enough on the side of the truth as
it was then assailed and at stake, and was opposed
to ecclesiastical prosecutions for heresy. Even this
charge has been met by extracts from his works de
nouncing In turn every heresy of his day in terms to
which there Is nothing lacking of emphasis or point.
That however was his general character, and It is
charitable to suppose that it was a constitutional
opposition to what to one of his temperament seemed
the uncompromising and persecuting orthodoxy of
Athanasius that ranged him among the persistent
enemies of the latter. Certain it is that in the long
series of prosecutions aimed by Arians and Arian
sympathizers against their one unanswerable and in
vincible foe Eusebius was always In the ranks of the
prosecutors; and at the very inception of the long
and fierce attempt of his enemies to crush him,
Athanasius disobeyed the summons of the emperor

Objections to the "Homoousion." 143
to defend himself before a council to be held at Cae
sarea, on the ground that the prejudice of Its bishop
precluded the hope of a just trial at that place.
With such leaders, there Is no question that there was
after the council a large party of practically orthodox
bishops who were more or less dissatisfied with Its re
sults and opposed to their further carrying out under
the Indomitable and determined lead of Athanasius.
Apart from these personal feelings and motives,
we have at this point to take up the real objections
of the conservative party, waived at Nicasa but now
revived and emphasized, not merely to the general
principle of the scientific definition of spiritual mys
teries, but to the principal terms, or we may say to the
particular term, employed in the Nicene definition.
The first objection to the homoousion, that the
term was not to be found in the Scriptures and that
revealed mysteries should be expressed only In the
language of revelation, had been met by the rejoin
der that neither were other explanatory phrases, the
Arian ones e.g., "out of nothing," "there was once
when he was not," etc., in the Scriptures. This had
weighed with Eusebius, and in his report to his
church of his part In the council he says that it had
Influenced him to join In the condemnation of Arian
ism. But if Arianism had been condemned on that
ground, as by many it was and not for deeper rea
sons, then the rejoinder of the church was met and
the objection remained to the language of the creed.
And there is no question that with the great mass of
conservatives this objection weighed and continued
long to weigh very heavily.

144 The Ecumenical Councils.
The second objection was perhaps even greater.
The term was not only unscriptural, it was uneath-
ollc and Indeed antlcatholic ; that Is, it had been
distinctly repudiated by the church as unsound. It
seems that there was evidence that the great Origen
had described the Son as homoousion with the
Father, and TertuUian, In Latin, had used an equiv
alent expression ; and it might have grown naturally
and of Itself Into orthodox and catholic use. But
subsequently Paul of Samosata had brought the
term Into discredit by using it in a sense which led
the Council of Antioch to repudiate It In condemn
ing him. Then even the theologians of Alexandria
who succeeded Origen had, in their long fight with
Sabellianism, come to distrust the word because, in
the vagueness of its meaning. It had been used In
the Sabellian sense to Imply the Identity of the Son
with the Father in person as well as in essence or
nature. There was room therefore for the charge
that It was opposed to the cathoUc mind of the
church; and this to very many was confirmed by
the exposure In the person of Marcellus of the fact
that some at least — and they could not know how
many — of the very theologians who had imposed
the homoousion upon the councU were not free from
the SabeUIan taint which the church had feared.
Indeed Marcellus, and more openly his greater disci
ple Photlus, were guilty of a Sabellianism which logi
cally resulted in the apparently opposite heresy of
Paul of Samosata. Denying any real personal dis
tinctions In the Trinity, they ended not in the one
logical consequence of Patripassianism, but in the

Force of the "Homoousion." 145
other which remained open to them — the notion that
Jesus Christ was the incarnation not of the Godhead,
or the Father, but only of a " manifestation " of the
Father. This amounted to nothing more than the
incarnation of a divine " virtue " of Paul of Samosata,
and both alike ended in a sort of higher Ebionism.
It has been seen that Athanasius himself had felt
all these objections to the homoousion and realized
that the word had to be purged from Its impure
associations, and conventionally separated to Its
cathoUc meaning and use, before It could become
the true watchword of the church. It was simply
not so much the best as the least objectionable and
the most effective word that could be found ; and he
foresaw that it would work Its way Into definiteness
and purity of use and meaning, and so into universal
favor and acceptance.
It is interesting to trace Athanaslus's own estimate
of the meaning and value of the homoousion. Al
ways understanding It in the sense which was to
become that of the church, he was not unnaturally
disposed to find In it both expression of truth and
exclusion of error more than properly belonged to it.
Thus, at one time at least, he interpreted it as includ
ing In Its predication of the Son not only sameness
of essence with the Father but also inseparateness of
essence from that of the Father. This would remove
a real difficulty In the way of the whole attempt at
definition. It was said that the Son was of the same
substance with the Father; so it might be said that
one man was of the same substance with another
man, or one coin with another coin ; was that all that

146 The Ecumenical Councils.
was meant? No; something more Is meant in the
divine relationship than In the other two. While a
human son is of the same substance with his father,
there Is a separation or division of their substances ;
they are different and distinct not only persons but
portions of the common nature or substance of hu
manity. Two coins of a common substance are
distinct not only as Individual pieces but as separated
portions of the same material. It is not Intended to
be so represented In the Godhead, as though the
different persons of the Trinity were separate por
tions of the common divine essence or substance,
outside of and apart from or side by side with one
another. The substance of the Godhead is not di
vided into a number of individuals but is one and
Indivisible ; and in the one personally differentiated
but essentially undivided Godhead we recognize and
distinguish Father, Son and Holy Ghost. So to
Athanasius the homoousion expressed not merely
sameness or Hkeness, but undivided and unbroken
unity of "ousia" or essence ; the Son, distinguished as
Logos or Son, is undistinguished as God, from the
Father. He has no being apart from the common
one of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but only
that distinct and Individual mode of being which the
church discriminates as hypostasis or personality, and
which enables us to distinguish his proper function
and operations In the Godhead. In a sense which Is
true of no other distinct persons — because all others
are not only distinct but separate — the Father is
always in the Son and the Son in the Father, and
neither can be nor be thought apart or separate from

Meaning of "Substance." 147
the other; what the Son does the Father does, and
each Is what In distinction he Is only In and through
the other. When, later, the Semi-Arian party
thought to find In the other term "homolousion" — of
like, instead of same, nature — an escape from the
possible Sabellian sense of the homoousion, the ar
gument which prevailed against the substitution was
this difference between the two terms, that the for
mer meant just that which it was the merit and
value of the latter that it excluded. It was proper
to say of two coins or of two men that they were of
like or similar substance, but not of the persons of
the Godhead ; for the term ImpUes that while in one
sense they are the same. In another sense they are
not the same substance, but different and separated
parts of the same. This, it was contended, is pro
vided against In the homoousion, which means not
only that the substance Is one in Father and Son
but that they are not different parts or portions of
the one divine substance.
This little discussion wIU Introduce and Ulustrate
yet another objection on the part of the conserva
tives to the Nicene terms, which was that they were
too physical or material to be applicable to spiritual
and divine things. The application of such a term
as " substance " to God seems to imply a sort of stuff
or material of which he Is formed. This of course Is
not as true of the Greek ousia as it Is of the Latin
substantia, but It Is still liable to the charge and It
was no Insignificant additional difficulty with which
the Athanasians had to contend. By essence or sub
stance in this connecrion Is meant simply that which

148 The Ecumenical Councils.
a thing Is, that which constitutes and defines It; in
which sense It may just as well be applied to the
most spiritual as to the most material of subjects.
That the Son is of the essence or substance of the
Father means that he is really God; that he pos
sesses all the attributes and properties that belong to
the concept and to the reality of Godhead.
We come however to the real springs and causes
of the Indescribable troubles of the period when we
pass from the great mass of mere obstructive con
servatism in the church to the outer circle of real
Arianism, which having survived its defeat and con
demnation In the council began at once and with the
most far-reaching policy to organize victory for itself
in a much wider arena and upon a far larger scale.
The Arians had measured their strength and discov
ered their weakness ; they were In a hopeless minor
ity. In an opposition which could not secure even a
hearing In any representative assembly of the whole
church. Moreover the emperor was committed
against them ; he had so associated the great coun
cil with himself and invested himself In the glory of
It, that they had no hope of reversing Its decisions
In his lifetime. Adapting their policy to their cir
cumstances, they withdrew from the frankness and
boldness upon which they had too confidently relied ;
and having given In their adhesion to the letter of
the Nicene Confession, they proceeded to evade and
pervert Its spirit and undermine and destroy Its
credit. Forming no party of their own, they merged
and concealed themselves in the great body of the
doubtful and dissatisfied conservatives, and set them-

Policy of the Arians. 149
selves to the task of fostering their doubts and fan
ning the flame of their dissatisfaction. So that, as
we have seen, a large part of the reaction which set
In against the council and of the opposition to Atha
nasius himself came from, or at least through, those
who were if they only knew it at one with it and him
and in no real unity with those at whose instigation
they were acting. In the next place the Arians set
themselves not indeed to convert the emperor but
to win him over to at least a policy of personal toler
ance and doctrinal indifference. The moderate Euse
bius of Caesarea, who had no sympathy with the
positiveness and decision with which Athanasius had
carried things, was always of influence with the em
peror, whom he extravagantly admired and flattered
and whom he no doubt affected with his own latitu
dinarianism. But more than this Eusebius of Nico
media, which was before Constantinople the chief
seat of the Imperial court, had been the spiritual
adviser of Constantia, widow of Licinius and sister of
Constantine; and through her the Arians reached
the ears of Constantine and won him over so far as
to convince him that by far too much had been made
of the errors of Arius and Eusebius, and that he
himself had through misrepresentations been carried
too far In his severity against them. By degrees
he not only mitigated his own harshness but even
brought official pressure to bear upon Athanasius
himself to restore Arius and to receive back Into
communion all who were willing to come. Atha
nasius could not be coerced, and the Arians were not
long In discovering that nothing was to be accom-

150 The Ecumenical Councils.
pUshed by them without his destruction. A series
of councUs having this end in view sat successively
In Caesarea, Tyre, Jerusalem and Constantinople.
Consisting mainly of conservatives, they were in
spired and controlled by the Arian leaders, who
succeeded finally in restoring Arius and procuring
the banishment of Athanasius. From this time on
Constantine, while still maintaining the Nicene de
cisions, was practically associated with the Arian
party and, as we have seen, received the last offices
of rehgion from Eusebius of Nicomedia.
To their duplicity and gradual ascendency over
the mind of the emperor the Arians added a third
line of policy which was carried out with an unscru
pulous and unrelenting persistency that seems now
inconceivable and incredible. This was to destroy
Nicenism graduaUy by the personal overthrow and
ruin of Its chief representatives and advocates; a
scheme In which they all but succeeded and hu
manly speaking brought the truth to the very point
of utter extinction. Nothing indeed seemed to save
it but the superhuman vitality, Indomitableness and
faithfulness of one man.
They began with Eustathius, patriarch of Antioch,
one of the presidents and a distinguished leader in
the council. They found no great difficulty in depos
ing him, and set up a successor; but their action
created a schism in the capital of the East which
lasted through the century and was the source of
endless confusion and trouble.
Unfortunately, as we have seen, Marcellus of An
cyra was fair game and not only furnished a text for

Attempt to Destroy Athanasius. 151
the crusade against the alleged SabeUianism and even
Samosatenism of the council, but rallied a large fol
lowing of orthodox conservatives under the banner
of the Eusebians and gave a plausible excuse for
further prosecutions. And It did not help matters
that the Athanasians unwisely defended Marcellus,
and that in Rome Itself he was never formally ex
cluded from communion.
But Athanasius was their rock of offence, upon
which they beat In vain for nearly fifty years until
they broke themselves to pieces. Within a year after
the council Alexander died and Athanasius succeeded
him in the patriarchate of Alexandria, against the
fierce opposition of a still powerful Arian and Mele
tian Influence, which was thenceforth at the ser
vice of the Eusebian machinations and ready at any
time to manufacture whatever testimony was needed
against either his public administration or his private
character. There was never any attempt as In the
case of the others to bring doctrinal charges against
Athanasius ; they knew him of old, and besides this
would have been to impeach the Nicene Council
itself, which no one was prepared publicly to do. The
ground for beginning proceedings against him was
his contumacy in disobeying the Imperial command,
" On pain of removal from his see, to receive to
communion any who desired It," and general al
leged acts of ecclesiastical and official tyranny and
severity. But these grew rapidly into personal
charges against him, so monstrous and ridiculous, so
abundantly disproved and persistently revived and
reiterated, so absurdly unworthy of the least histori-

152 The Ecumenical Councils.
cal consideration, that nothing can explain them but
the supposition that, once Involved In their crusade
against him, it was a matter of life and death with
his enemies to carry it through successfully.
From Caesarea, whose learned bishop we have seen
In the thick of the fight against him, to Tyre, whence
not awaiting the foregone conclusion of his condem
nation he suddenly took ship and left the council, to
face the emperor himself and demand justice of him ;
from Tyre to Jerusalem, where Arius on new and
amended representations of his views was pronounced
orthodox; from Jerusalem to Constantinople, where
all parties were summoned by the emperor to appear
before himself, the case dragged on from year to year.
Finally when all the charges were about to be dis
missed by the emperor as frivolous and malicious, the
new one was suddenly brought forward of his having
threatened to distress Constantinople by delaying the
sailing of the corn ships from Alexandria. Either
because this was too serious and dangerous a power
for any individual to be even charged with possess
ing, or else because the emperor was hopeless of put
ting any other termination to the endless proceedings,
Athanasius was banished to Treves in Germany. It
was soon after this that Arius presented himself again
before the emperor In person and succeeded In convinc
ing him of his orthodoxy. Constantine commanded
that he should be publicly admitted to communion
on a set occasion, but on his progress to the cathedral
for that purpose Arius was seized with a shocking
disease which in a few hours terminated his life.
Soon after this first banishment of Athanasius the

Athanasius in Exile. 153
Emperor Constantine died, A.D. 337. The empire
fell to his three sons, Constantine II. taking the
West, Constantius the East, and Constans the centre.
The elder and younger emperors were favorable to
the catholic faith, and both at long intervals had the
opportunity of serving it effectually in the person of
Athanasius. But Constantius, who ruled all the area
covered by the Arian troubles, was himself wholly
under Arian Influence, and from his accession we may
date a bolder and more open aggressiveness against
the principles and the representatives of the Nicene
faith. Athanasius Indeed through the Influence of
Constantine II., whose admiration and friendship he
had won In his banishment to the West, was restored
to his see atthe close of A.D. 338. But In the mean
time his arch-enemy Eusebius had been translated
from Nicomedia to Constantinople In place of the
orthodox Paul, and more vigorous measures were in
preparation against him. By Easter of 340 he was
in his second exile, this time In Rome where he was
kindly received by the bishop, Julius ; and In his see
the Arian George of Cappadocia had been Intruded
with bitter persecution of the catholics.
After the faUure of repeated attempts by Julius to as
semble a council at Rome where Athanasius might have
an Impartial hearing, the Eusebians, who In spite of
many promises could never be enticed thither, took oc
casion upon the consecration of " the Golden Church,"
a new cathedral at Antioch, to assemble the ninety-
seven bishops present and constitute a council. This
was in August, 341, and the council made up largely
of conservatives adopted a creed orthodox in sub-

154 The Ecumenical Councils.
stance but omitting the homoousion, and reaffirmed
the action of Tyre in condemnation of Athanasius.
Somewhat later JuUus of Rome, despairing of the
appearance of the Eusebians but ignorant of their
action at Antioch, assembled a council which declared
Athanasius innocent, but unfortunately also pro
nounced Marcellus on his own representation of his
views orthodox. Before this, in 340, Constantine II.
had been killed in an unwarrantable Invasion of his
brother Constans's dominions. Nevertheless, Con
stans sharing his brother's favorable disposition to
ward Athanasius used his influence as the other had
in his favor; and by the end of 343 bishops from
East and West were assembled at Sardica, the capi
tal of Mcesia, to review and pass judgment upon the
whole situation. But the council came to no practi
cal result in uniting the two sections of the church.
The Eusebians were bent on treating Athanasius as
already judged and condemned and refused to sit in
the council with him. The Western bishops were
unwilling to recognize the proceedings by which this
result had been reached, but were wiUIng to listen
de novo to all the evidence against him and decide
the case impartially on its merits. The Eusebians
finding themselves slightly in the minority withdrew
to Philippopolis where they organized a council and
confirmed the condemnation of Athanasius. The re
duced councU at Sardica pronounced him innocent,
recognized the Nicene Symbol as the faith of the
church, excommunicated a number of Eusebian bish
ops, and wrote letters of sympathy to the catholics
of Alexandria and Egypt.

Violence of Constantitis. 155
Matters were thus further apart than ever. In the
East, Constantius and his Arian advisers were pro
voked to harsher methods and orders were issued
that Athanasius and his adherents should be put to
death if they returned to Alexandria. But messengers
were sent from Constans and from the councU in Sar
dica to Constantius in Antioch ; and fortunately a fit
of honest and just disgust on the occasion of their
reception with the methods of his Arian friends In
the city, the convenient and timely death of the in
truder Gregory at Alexandria, the pressure of his
Persian war, and the influence and threats of Constans
combined to move Constantius to a brief interval of
tolerance and even kindness toward the catholics
of Egypt. The return and welcome of Athanasius
In the fall of 346 from his second exUe was the occa
sion of a spontaneous and popular demonstration
which was long the great historical type and standard
of such events. The next few years were a period
of great peace, but In 350 the Emperor Constans lost
his life in the revolt of Magnentius. Constantius was
for several years engaged In putting down a succes
sion of rebeUions In the West, at the end of which he
found himself sole master of the Roman world. Then
his entire character came out and he set himself to
the task of forcing Arianism upon the empire. " His
will," he declared, " should serve the Westerns for a
canon as it had served the Syrians." In the Council
of Aries, 353, and Milan, 355, he personally forced
the condemnation of Athanasius upon the assembled
bishops by the Imprisonment or banishment of all who
resisted. In 3 5 6 officers of the empire formally handed

156 The Ecumenical Councils.
over all the churches in Alexandria to the Arians.
The aged Hosius now nearly one hundred years old,
after so long a life of faithfulness to the truth, was
forced by imprisonment and torture Into signing an
Arian creed. And Liberius, bishop of Rome, was
released from the irksomeness and hopelessness of
exile by submission to the same shameful condition.
At Ariminum or Rimini in the year 359, the political
bishops succeeded, by guile as well as force, in im
posing upon the West a creed omitting the homoou
sion (the third of Sirmium), which Constantius then
undertook to make the creed of the whole church. It
was of this council that St. Jerome gave his famous
summary : " Ingemult totus orbis, et Arianum se esse
miratus est."
During this time Athanasius, his seat In Alexan
dria occupied by George the Cappadocian, his flock
persecuted and scattered, his life sought and only
preserved from his enemies by a series of hairbreadth
and sometimes romantic escapes, was now In flight
in the desert, now In hiding among his faithful friends
the hermits of the Thebaid, now in disguise among
his people, sometimes in Alexandria itself; but never
despondent about himself or In despair of the ultimate
success of the truth he was In the midst of such a
life Incessantly busy In defence of the faith, and pro
duced one after another those treatises which contrib
uted mainly to Its final triumph and have been ever
since an armory of weapons In its defence.
At last In the winter of 361 Constantius died and
was succeeded by his cousin Julian. Julian had been
educated under the tutelage of Eusebius of NIcome-

Julian, Jovian and Valens. 157
dia, but not without reason had revolted from the
religion of his predecessor, whose character he justly
despised, and had apostatized to paganism, to the re
vival of which he devoted much of the Interest and
energy of his brief reign. The policy of JuHan to
ward Christianity was one of complete toleration,
looking more for Its extinction by internal dissensions
than by outward persecution. From this a sole ex
ception seems to have been made of Athanasius, whs
after a brief return to his see was again banished,
with a threat of something worse if he should attempt
to return. Julian however was kiUed in a campaign
against the Persians In the summer of 363, and was
succeeded by the Christian and orthodox Emperor
Jovian, who not only immediately restored Athana
sius but personaUy applied to him for the correct state
ment of the catholic faith. This, after convening a
council In Alexandria, Athanasius conveyed to him
in person In the form of a synodal letter. In which
" the Nicene Creed was embodied, its scrlpturalness
asserted and the great majority of churches (including
the British) referred to as professing it; Arianism
was condemned, Semi-Arianism (Homoiouslanism)
pronounced Inadequate ; the homoousion explained as
expressive of Christ's real Sonship; the coequallty
of the Holy Spirit maintained, in terms which partiy
anticipate the language of the creed of Constanti
nople." This promised to be the end of the long series of
troubles, but in 364 Jovian died and under his suc
cessors, Valentlnlan and Valens, the East fell to the
latter, who soon gave evidence of a repetition of the

158 The Ecumenical Councils.
policy of Constantius. Athanasius in the spring of
365 made another of those sudden and narrow escapes
from violence to his person which were so frequent
in his career, and was for some time in concealment.
He was however soon restored and spent the re
mainder of his life, until 373, in the administration
of his diocese, in advising In matters of general eccle
siastical pohcy, and In writing his masterly defences
of the Nicene faith.
This rapid and brief sketch of the efforts of Arian
ism to overthrow the work of the Council of Nicaea
by the destruction of its leaders and especially of the
great Athanasius gives but a faint conception either
of the desperate persistence of Arianism in its deter
mination to possess the world, or of the superhuman
endurance and matchless ability of Athanasius in
withstanding and defeating it. To him It was given
to render the most splendid and successful service
In the noblest and holiest cause the world has ever
known. While Its alliance with the empire was enabling
Arianism to pursue its policy of outward violence,
there were changes going on within It that were
preparing the way for Its own speedy disintegra
tion and destruction. It may be readily supposed
that after the death of Constantine the Great and
under Constantius It did not continue long to veil
itself under the orthodox conservatism in the name
of which many of its earlier crimes were committed ;
or even under the Semi-Arianism, which though ap
parently nearer to it was really much more akin to
Nicenism, from which as Athanasius himself said It

Disintegration of Arianism. 159

dissented more on verbal than on real grounds.
Arianism proper soon separated Itself and came out
In Its true colors under such men as Aetius and Eu-
nomlus, who scouting alike the homoousion and the
homoiouslon boldly set up against them the symbol
of the heteroouslon. They frankly admitted that
there was no middle ground between an absolute
sameness of essence and nature In the Father and the
Son and an absolute difference. Between the divine
and any, no matter how exalted, created nature there
was an infinite distance quite as far from " likeness "
as from "sameness." In a series of councUs Arian
ism proper gradually diverged from aU half-way posi
tions, and under the titles Eunomians (from their
leader), Anomoeans (a,v6\i,oiov), Heteroousiasts {krepoov-
atov), etc., openly avowed the non-divinity of the Son
of God.
Under this process it became progressively appa
rent to the great mass of conservatives. Semi- Arians
and other more or less orthodox dissenters from the
Nicene definitions that there was Indeed no middle
ground for them ; that like the dove without the ark
they had been hovering over the face of the deep
looking in vain for some other rest to the sole of their
feet, and none other existed. The moderation of
Athanasius in deaUng with the Semi- Arians combined
with his sublime and unshaken confidence In the truth
and final triumph of the Nicene faith must have had
no little to do with the final absorption of the great
mass of them into the body of the church. When
they began at last to appreciate the true nature and
outcome of Arianism and to be perplexed by their

i6o The Ecumenical Councils.
own position, Athanasius wrote of them as " brothers
who mean essentially what churchmen mean. He
wiU not for the present urge the homoousion upon
them. He is sure that In time they will accept It as
securing that doctrine of Christ's essential Sonship
which their own symbol, homolousion, could not ade
quately guard. But while exhibiting this large-
minded patience and forbearance he Is careful to
contrast the long series of Arian, Semi-Arian and
conservative creeds with the one Invariable standard
of the orthodox; the only refuge from restless varia
tions will be found In the frank adoption of the creed
of Nicaea." His confidence was justified and his hope
realized in the now rapidly approaching collapse of
Arianism, and the general gathering in of the long-
distracted flock into the Nicene fold.
The explanation then of the protracted Arian agi
tation of the fourth century, divested of Its purely
human selfish and poHtical elements and considered
only In so far as it was religious, may be stated as
follows. It Included within itself every possible shade
of dissatisfaction with the positive and scientific def
initions of the Council of Nicasa, from the mere con
servative reluctance to exclude by such definition at
aU to the most real and radical Arian opposition to
the truth defined, viz., that of the divinity of the
Son of God.
In the course of the agitation the mind of the
church was effectually aroused and quickened and
every resource of thought and language was tested
in every direction to discover some more perfect or
less Imperfect mode of expressing and explaining the

Triumph of Nicenism. i6i
truth of the Scriptures and of the church with regard
to the person of Jesus Christ. The result of over
fifty years of criticism and experiment, of hesitation,
doubt and distraction, brought the church around be
fore the Second General Council to the acceptance
after the fullest reflection of just what, before reflec
tion at the suggestion and by the guidance of a few
great souls. It had Instinctively and intuitively seen to
be the truth at the first.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIRST GENERAL COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
HE reign of Theodosius the Great was
scarcely less opportune and decisive for
Christianity than that of Constantine the
Great. It gave in the Second Ecumeni
cal Council the opportunity just when it
was needed for gathering in the results of the long
discussion that succeeded the First. Constantinople
closes the Arian controversy only in the sense of reap
ing the conclusions and giving final shape to the de
cisions which the logic of fifty years of experiment
had practically already brought to a determination.
The later council appears peaceful and tame in com
parison with the earHer, because the hostile forces
just gathered in all their freshness and might at the
one were spent and dead at the other. Its conclu
sions were all foregone ; the easy displacement every
where of Arianism by Nicene orthodoxy was accom
plished without serious disturbance, because Arianism
was exhausted and ready to pass away, while Atha-
naslanism had but attained its strength by wrestling
and was prepared to enter upon and run Its course.
We have seen how long Athanasius stood almost
162

Continuation of Nicene Theology. 163
alone in the theological defence of the great doctrine
of the Trinity, whose scientific statement was to be
the outcome of his labors and sufferings and which
was forever after to be associated most closely with
his name. But through him and the exigencies of
the times there was arising a great school of theolo
gians hardly inferior to himself. In whose hands his
work was to attain almost complete and final perfec
tion. Not to mention Hilary of Poictlers in the West,
In the East the three great Cappadocian bishops,
Gregory of Nazlanzus, Basil, and Gregory of Nyssa,
were all born about or not long after the date of the
Council of Nicaea, and had added their labors to those
of Athanasius before that of Constantinople.
In an important point the scientific statement of
the doctrine of the Trinity was left Incomplete In the
mind of Athanasius and In the definition of Nicaea.
It will be remembered that in the discussions of that
definition the brunt of controversy had fallen upon
the word " ousia " ; was the Son of God In the relation
of his nature to that of the Father homoouslos or
homoiousios, or heteroouslos, of the same or similar or
other and dissimilar essence or substance ? The point
so far not only attained in thought but also reduced
to successful expression In the homoousion was the es
sential and real divinity of the Son of God. In all
the discussions the fact also of a personal distinction,
and an eternal distinction, between Father and Son
had been equally Insisted upon and was no doubt
involved or Implied in the language of the Nicene
Creed. But It had not been expressed in any definite
single term which had commended Itself to aU or

164 The Ecumenical Councils.
most of the Nicene theologians, or to the mind of
Athanasius himself, as exactly designating the place
of the distinction, as "ousia" did that of the Identity.
It was finaUy agreed that In the Godhead there was
one ousia, but there were three hypostases ; the first
of these terms was already fixed but the second was
not, nor any equivalent for it. It was the Gregorles
and Basil who mainly effected the determination and
separation of the term " hypostasis " to this specific
sense and fixed it In the use of the church. The thing
expressed by It is vastly more delicate and difficult to
be understood or expressed than the meaning of the
other term, "ousia." The theologians of the fourth
century, while feeling the necessity of a word designat
ing the distinctions in the Godhead and exhausting the
resources of the Greek language to find one, would
never have consented to the use of a term so strong
as our English one " person," which requires the
most careful guarding and explanation not to express
too much. The distinctions in the Trinity are indeed
essentially personal and In one sense no other term
will properly express them; for in Father, Son and
Holy Ghost just what we recognize In each is a sub
ject of living activities who must of necessity be dis
criminated from the others and who bears relations to
the others, and this is just what we mean by a person.
But the different personal subjects within the God
head ought not even remotely to be compared, which
our use of the term "persons" almost compels, with
such differences and distinctions as exist between men
who are not only wholly distinct but whoUy separate
and apart from one another. From this false impres-

Meaning of "Hypostasis" or "Person!' 165
sion by association the Greek hypostasis was free, and
yet even with that advantage the tripersonality was
in danger of running into a tritheism, to which we are
vastly more liable.
Thus In the East " hypostasis " was gradually be
coming the term expressive of personal distinction,
in competition however with the other term prosopon,
the equivalent of the Latin persona. In the West
persona was preferred, while substantia, the exact
etymological equivalent of " hypostasis," was used In
the other sense, of " ousia," essence or substance. In
this confusion and conflict of expressions there was
of course much friction and misunderstanding among
those who were at bottom agreed. But as time went
on and It was made more and more apparent that
among the orthodox It was simply a question of the
meaning of words and not any difference in the
understanding of things, it was peacefuUy and tacitly
agreed that in Greek and in Latin the one truth
should be expressed as best it might, In the terms
that were least Insufficient and misleading. It is
however unfortunate that the Westerns should be
limited, if they were so, first to the term " substance "
for "ousia," which goes the furthest toward imparting
material conceptions into the notion of the divine
nature, and afterward to the term "persons" for
"hypostases," which impUes popularly at least the
widest not merely distinction but separation between
the three persons In the one divine substance.
Although we have already, perhaps at too great
length, anticipated It, It wIU be necessary In order to
indicate the additional length or depth to which Trin-

1 66 The Ecumenical Councils.
Italian speculation was carried by the great theological
school of this period, to review the course of Trinita
rian thought up to this point. This course has been
on the whole an a posteriori one, a reasoning back
from the facts of the incarnation, through those of
nature and creation, to the essential and internal na
ture of God himself. The original Impulse began
with the reUgious and practical necessity of recogniz
ing the real divinity of the Son of God, incarnate in
Jesus Christ, as afterward of the Holy Ghost, incor
porate In the church ; and yet at the same time of
personally distinguishing these from each other and
from the Father, — tJiat Is to say, distinguishing them
as different divine subjects with whom we deal per
sonally, and who deal personally with one another. In
their several offices and functions. This was at once
the scriptural representation, and a representation
necessitated by the practical and devotional Hfe and
worship of the church. " Baptism doth represent
unto us our profession," and baptism brings us Into
a spiritual and personal relation of unity and fellow
ship with " the Father and the Son and the Holy
Ghost." From this baptismal formula grew up all
the church confessions and the general creeds, every
one of which involved the threefold personal relation ;
and so the threefold personal distinction was wrought
from the first Into the mind of every individual be
liever, as It was the confession of every congregation
and the common faith of the whole church. The
church was never for one instant In danger of losing
the sense of the absolute unity of God ; yet to It the
Son and the Holy Ghost were as truly God as the

Review of Trinitarian Thought. 167
Father, while It could never be said of either of them
that he was the Father.
In the second place we saw how immediately the
church passed back from the Christological to the
cosmological significance of our Lord. He was the
head not only of humanity but of creation, the end
and final cause of nature as well as of grace. Now
as In the Incarnation so in the creation the rational,
Ideating, creative principle and cause of the world,
that which is manifest in phenomena, cannot be any
thing else than God ifiebg) and yet It Is not God (b Q^og).
That Is to say, it is not the divine ousia but the divine
Logos which Is revealed In creation. Just as It Is not
a man's being but his thought or mind or will which
is expressed in those productions of his which are
from him but are distinguished from himself; only
with this difference, that while In man's productions
the objectified thought or wiU becomes separated and
ceases to be living and personal, that of God can
never be so but Is always personal and himself, though
It may need equaUy to be distinguished from himself.
That the Trinitarian movement was a more or less
conscious or unconscious solution of the truth which
lay just half-way between deism and pantheism may
be iUustrated historically as well as speculatively.
The principle underlying pantheism may be described
as "substantiaUty," that of deism as " creationlsm."
According to the former aU being or existence Is of
the substance of God, an evolution or extension of
himself ; according to the latter it is not of the being
but of the bare wUl or word of God. The one sees
the world only in God and God only in the world.

1 68 The Ecumenical Councils.
To the other, the world and God are wholly not only
distinct but separate one from the other. Now the
bare statement of the facts makes It apparent that as
the earlier development of Christianity was between
the deism of Ebionism and the Gnostic pantheism of
Docetism, so its progress in the period we are con
sidering lies between Arianism and Sabellianism,
which are to a certain extent their successors on op
posite sides of the truth. On the one hand Arianism
represents the barest and baldest creationlsm ; it not
only puts the world outside of God, but separates it
the furthest possible from him by making it the
creation of a creature. On the other side Sabellian
ism, In its original form and In Its revival by Mar
cellus, through the denial of essential and eternal
distinctions In God, is constantly running Into the
pantheistic extreme of confounding God himself with
the world. God who Is eternally and essentially one
and without distinctions becomes three in the economy
of creation and incarnation. But the Son, for exam
ple, who is manifested In these divine acts is only a
different manifestation of the one divine person and
is really identical with the F"ather. So that it is the
Godhead, and not the Logos or Son of God only, who
is revealed in creation and incarnate In Christ. Now
Trinitarian theism, as developed In the theology of
the period, not only avoided the error of either ex
treme but was able to hold and to do full justice to
the truth of each. It fully holds the truth of crea
tionlsm as against the pantheistic error of substantial
ity. All works of God, like creation and redemption,
are in a true sense outside of him and must be dis-

Distinctions within the Godhead. 169
tinguished from him ; they are revelations or manifes
tations not of his ousia or being but of his Logos or
objective self-expression; not of himself but of his
personal wisdom and power and love. On the other
hand, the world is not in the Arian sense outside of
God and God outside of it, but each is, in a truer
sense than the Sabellian or pantheistic one, in the
other. For though the Logos who is the inner and
ideal truth and reality of both creation and redemp
tion Is not 6 Qe.bg, he Is Qebg. By which Is meant that
while he Is not also Father and Holy Ghost, he Is
nevertheless not apart from them, but In Indissoluble
union with them Is the one only and living God ; he
Is not, after human analogies, the separated and im
personal, but the living, personal and Inseparable
wisdom, will and Word of God.
If however Trinitarian theology had not gone back
further even than these Christological and cosmolog
ical evidences and illustrations of its truth, it would
have left the Inner personal distinctions In the God
head a matter not of necessity to the being of God
himself, but only necessary to the existence of such
objective activities as those which we designate crea
tion and redemption. In other words the distinctions
of the Trinity would be relative not to God in him
self, but only to the outward activities of God In those
things which are not himself. Athanasius and the
theologians after him fully realized this, and already
opened up that rich and endless field of philosophical
as well as theological speculation which since then
has so abundantly demonstrated the fact that the
personal distinctions within the Godhead, which the

170 ¦ The Ectimenical Councils.
church as best It may has formulated In the doctrine
of the Trinity, are necessary not only as a basis
of true relations of God to his works of creation
and redemption, but as a condition of his own
being. God as bare simplicity and homogeneity, as
unity without differentiation or distinction, cannot be
thought as being or doing anything at all. If God
is in himself a living God, and does not merely come
to life and activity In the external world; If within
himself, and not for the first time in it or In relation
to it, he possesses reason, intelUgence, affection, will
and energy, — then we must say that those distinc
tions which through the world and ourselves we rec
ognize and call the Trinity must have existed before
ourselves and the world ; for without them God could
not have been himself, and could not have created the
world and us. All the fathers whom we are now
considering express, with the illustrations which are
still in use, the fact that if God is bare unity and
absoluteness we cannot predicate of him wisdom
or knowledge, love, will or action. If we cannot
think of him otherwise than as eternally all these,
then there is in him from eternity that ground of
personal distinctions which is the condition of his
being what he is in himself, as well as of his doing
what he does In the world.
The connection of these reflections with the Coun
cU of Constantinople is this : as we have said, the in
terest and value of that council lies not so much in
what it accomplished itself — though that was some
thing — as In what it Indicated and represented. We
may say that the Council of Constantinople swept up

Growth of a Religious Philosophy. 171
together and removed the debris of the controversy
Inaugurated by that of Nicasa. When we speak of
Arianism being swept away by It, we do not of course
mean that this was literally and universally so. There
was no little life and survival still to be found in it
In spots, and It long continued to exhibit vigor and
vitality among the Gothic nations Christianized and
civilized by the great Arian missionary and bishop
Ulfilas. But If we look not at the actual, in them
selves less interesting and valuable, details of the
council but at the changes intellectual and spiritual
which had taken place since the CouncU of Nicaea
and which It was to sum up and measure, we shall
find that what had taken place was the thinking out
and formulating of a great religious and theological
philosophy, before which Arianism was destined to
evaporate like the dew before the sun. The fact is,
its poHtical and other external alliances had given to
Arianism a strength and Importance of which it was
wholly devoid in itself. Its religious deficiencies and
weakness were not more fatal than its utter lack of
any rational or philosophical truth or probability. Its
use was only to provoke and arouse the genuine
Christian thought and investigation and expression
which has become the permanent possession of the
church and which with aU Its inevitable, and from the
first acknowledged, deficiencies and Imperfections Is
the most valuable contribution that any age has made,
or probably wUl ever make, to either practical reUgion
or religious science and philosophy.
We saw how the period of the Nicene Council had
so fiooded the church with poHrics, worldliness and

172 The Ecumenical Councils.
selfish and partisan ambition that one who goes into
the details of the subsequent controversies finds It
hard to discover in them or under them any real
movement and progress of genuine rehgious and
Christian thought and life. And yet out of that con
fusion and strife emerged the scientific and final
formulation of the essential principle of true Chris
tianity, the real deity of the incarnate Son of God.
An Athanasius cannot be an Isolated and disconnected
phenomenon. Behind him and a few others like
him, and visible only through them, was a great
underlying mass of living, loving and suffering Chris
tian faith and Ufe. They were but the organs or
instruments by which It wrought out its faith and life
Into knowledge and expression.
So again, when, upon the accession of Theodosius,
Arianism had run its course and worked out Its own
condemnation ; and Semi-Arianism found Itself sus
pended over a void with no place of compromise be
tween Arian denial and Athanasian confession of the
Son of God; and conservatives were beginning to
flock back like doves to the ark which, as they had
discovered, offered the only resting-place for the sole
of their feet ; and finally when the emperor himself
began his long and strong reign by summoning the
church and the world back to Nicenism and ortho
doxy. It is not strange that, with instinctive presenti
ment of the inevitable, a current should set In toward
the church which should bring in with it many whose
return was actuated by no deep Christian principle.
There is certainly more than enough to disgust and
repel one who looks only upon the surface of the

Lights and Shadows of the Period. 1 73
events as they were now to follow. The greatest
soul connected with the Council of Constantinople,
with a courage and manhood that suffers by compar
ison with Athanasius the Great, withdrew from it and
from the patriarchate of Constantinople, with a noble
lament for the degeneracy of the times and the hope
less selfishness and disorder of the church, to seek
refuge and salvation for himself In the privacy of his
ancestral village and home. But that there was a
Gregory of Nazlanzus there and a Gregory of Nyssa
by his side — BasU, the strongest spirit of the three,
was dead — gives assurance that there was much more.
And even under the strife and confusion of the human
passion and littleness that disgusted them they might
have read more clearly than they did the triumph and
acceptance of the principles of Christian theology and
philosophy for which they, like Athanasius before them,
had so patiently labored and studied and suffered.
We might indeed be disheartened and perplexed
by any narration of the public fortunes of Christianity
at this period, as indeed at almost any period; but
let one go deeper and familiarize himself with the
thoughts and lives, the self-denials and sacrifices, the
studies, the Intellectual and spiritual attainments and
achievements of the Basils and Gregorles of this time ;
let him reflect that Gregory Nazianzen spent ten
years, from twenty to thirty, studying philosophy In
Athens In preparation for his lifelong devotion to
theology, and that Basil his fellow-student was not
his Inferior; let him remember that there must have
been a soU out of whkh such men grew, and but learn
the names of the mothers and sisters and friends at

174 The Ecumenical Councils.
home who nurtured and influenced and stimulated
and encouraged them, — and however one may blush
or smile at the abundant folly and weakness that ap
pears upon the surface it will be Impossible to doubt
or Ignore the continuous presence and grace of God
and the living power of Christianity In the church.
There Is abundant proof in contemporary literature
that while the bishops were being swayed here and
there by political and worldly considerations; or
what was much more common by their own inde
cision, and vacillation with regard to Issues and
questions upon, which they were compelled and yet
were not prepared to take sides; the great body of
the faithful permitted to live in peace and leave
thought and speculation alone were actually living
lives of as deep and sincere Christian faith, devotion
and charity as have characterized any age of the
church. Of the heads of the church, scarce given
between councils and conferences time to say their
prayers or leisure to learn their own minds, HUary
might write as he did: "Since the Nicene Council
we have done nothing but write the creed. While
we fight about words, inquire about novelties, take
advantage of ambiguities, criticise authors, fight on
party questions, have difficulties In agreeing, and
prepare to anathematize one another, there is scarcely
a man who belongs to Christ. First we have the
creed which bids us not use the Nicene consubstan-
tial (homoousion) ; then comes another which decrees
and preaches it; next, the third excuses the word
' substance ' as adopted by the fathers in their simpli
city ; lastly the fourth which, instead of excusing, con-

Faithfulness of the Common People. 175
demns. We determine creeds by the year or by the
month, we change our determinations, we prohibit our
changes, we anathematize our prohibitions. Thus we
either condemn others in our own persons, or our
selves In the Instance of others, and while we bite and
devour one another, are like to be consumed one of
another. ' ' And yet even among these warring bishops
there was a St. Hilary who took his part, and where
there was one there were more ; and let any one read
the life and writings of St. Hilary and ask himself
whether he belonged to Christ. It is only God who
knows how many even among the bishops had not
bowed the knee to the Baal of imperial patronage or
pressure but remained true In their hearts to the faith
and life of the gospel of Christ. On the other hand,
with regard to the simple faithful lay people, Basil
could write as follows of the attempt to Impose Ari
anism upon them In Asia Minor — and yet stronger
pictures are drawn of the condition of things In Egypt
and elsewhere : " Matters are come to this pass : the
people have left their houses of prayer and assemble
in deserts, — a pitiable sight ; women and children and
old men, and men otherwise Infirm, wretchedly faring
In the open air, amid the most profuse rains and
snow-storms and winds and frosts of winter ; and again
in summer under a scorching sun. To this they sub
mit because they will have no part in the wicked
Arian leaven." Again : " Only one offence is now
vigorously punished, — an accurate observance of our
fathers' traditions. For this cause the pious are driven
from their countries and transported into deserts.
The people are In lamentation, in continual tears at

176 The Ecumenical Councils.
home and abroad. There Is a cry In the city, a cry In
the country. In the roads, in the deserts. Joy and
spiritual cheerfulness are no more; our feasts are
turned into mourning, our houses of prayer are shut
up, our altars deprived of the spiritual worship." All
this Is not the description of a worldly and irreligious
population. To Ulustrate by particular Instances, Gregory Na
zianzen had a Nonna for his mother, as Augustine
a Monica. Let us select almost at random among
the holy women, the mothers and sisters and wives of
that age, the example of the wise counsellor and guide
In his youth of the great Basil. Gregory Nazianzen
and Basil had spent many years together In the uni
versities of Athens, and on their return rose at once
to great repute in their respective homes. Gregory
indeed repudiates the idea of either his friend or him
self having been seriously Influenced by ambition or
love of praise ; " but Basil's excellent sister, Macrlna "
— we are told on good authority — " judged him less
Indulgently and more truly. She found him on his
return from Athens inordinately elated, puffed up
with the pride of philosophy and science, and looking
down with contempt on his superiors In dignity and
rank. He had put on the airs and habits of a fine
gentleman, and without being stained with the vices
of the city was not altogether insensible to its plea
sures. It was a period of some peril to the young and
ardent rhetorician, the object of universal admiration.
Macrlna proved his good genius. Her warnings and
counsels saved him from the seductions of the world.
BasU describes himself at this period as one awaked

The Creed of Constantinople. 177
out of a deep sleep, and in the marvellous light of
gospel truth discovering the folly of that wisdom of
this world in the study of which nearly all his youth
had vanished." Such glimpses behind the scenes,
from what was going on upon the public stage to
what was hidden from sight in the secrecy of private
Christian homes, are necessary at once to console us
for the intrigues and violence of Christian partisans
and politicians and to account for the presence and
rise in their midst of Christian scholars, theologians
and saints than whom no other age has known more
or greater.
We have seen that the purpose and result of the
Council of Constantinople was simply to disestablish
Arianism and restore Nicenism. Its first canon rati
fies the Nicene Creed In its original form, and anathe
matizes the several different degrees, on either side,
of Arianism and Sabellianism ; and besides these
another heresy, which as pertaining to our Lord's
humanity and not his divinity forms not like them
the subject-matter of previous ones, but the transition
to a new controversy, viz., ApoUinarianism, which
will next demand our attention.
It has usually been accepted without question that
what we possess as the Nicene Creed, or what Is
often called for greater exactness the Nlceno-Con-
stantinopolltan Creed, is the creed of Nicaea with the
addition at Constantinople of the fuller sections upon
the person and office of the Holy Ghost. But even
leaving out these (and of course the later Filioque
clause), our so-caUed Nicene Creed has so many, in
considerable as well as considerable, divergencies from

178 The Ecumenical Councils.
the real Nicene confession of faith that It may well
merit more consideration than we can give It here.
For one thing, no little Importance had been attached
not only to the ono'waiov but to the sk Trjg ovaiag of
the original form. If the first expressed the oneness
of essence or substance against Arianism, the second
was thought to declare the distinction of persons
against SabeUianism. But the second has been left
out, and It Is somewhat unaccountable not only why
this but why certain other and more indifferent
changes should have been made. On the other
hand the clause " God of God " or " God from God "
Is inserted, which was not in the original ; and it may
weU be claimed that the gain of this phrase quite
counterbalances the loss of the other, for it just as
well expresses distinction from, along with oneness
with, the Father. But there seems to be not only
no reason given why these changes should be made,
but no proof that they were made by this council,
and the explanation of them has yet to be dis
covered. With regard to the additions which the council did
make, the question which had arisen under the name
of Macedonius was not, as we might now suppose, as
to the separate personahty but as to the real divinity
of the Holy Ghost. The Macedonians were only a
sect of Arians applying to the Third Person of the
Trinity the same irrational and irreligious speculations
which had been appUed to the Second. They held
the Holy Ghost, as they held the Son, to be a crea
ture, of different and inferior nature from the Father.
There Is no real Issue Involved In the discussion which

Practical Legislation. 179
has not been already considered and we need not de
vote further consideration to the heresy.
As to the practical legislation of the council bear
ing upon the organization and government of the
church, the famous canon providing that " the bishop
of Constantinople shall hold the first rank after the
bishop of Rome, because Constantinople Is New
Rome," was probably directed primarily against the
repeated and recent interferences and meddlings of
the older patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch
with the affairs of Constantinople. The effect was
rapidly to make Constantinople in the East almost
what Rome had been without competition or ques
tion in the West. The bearing of the canon upon
the question of the ground and nature of the suprem
acy of Rome, making It political rather than ecclesi
astical, as also that of the equally well-known canon
of Sardica, providing for certain appeals to Rome,
does not concern our present purpose and has been
abundantly dealt with by others.

CHAPTER IX.
APOLLINARIANISM
|MONG Catholics and heretics, among
anathematizers and anathematized,
prominent In the Council of Constan
tinople or made prominent by it, we
discovered one thinker who had passed
through and beyond the Trinitarian controversies of
the fourth century, and was already busy with all
the Christological problems of the fifth. ApoUInaris,
or ApoUInarlus, bishop of Laodlcea, was at once
among the most literary and scholarly men and
among the most acute and profound theologians of
that great age. He was thoroughly In accord with
all the catholic results of the first two general coun
cils, an Athanasian of the Athanasians; and his
mind ran on naturaUy, though perhaps prematurely
and too hastily as we shall see, to the application of
Trinitarian principles to the question of the divine-
human personality of Jesus Christ. That Is to say,
he was the first to carry the theological discussions
of the fourth century on Into the Christological ones
of the fifth.
Jesus Christ being divine, in the sense now once
for all determined, ih what sense and how could he
i8o

opening of Christological Discussion. i8i
be also and at the same time human? There had
been those, though not many even so late as the
third century, who had held that our Lord was pri
marily human and only secondarily divine ; that is,
he was a man essentially like other men who became
or was made divine through the union of God with
him. He Vv'as evOeoc dv6po)nog, a man filled with God ;
which might mean either filled with the impersonal
influence or grace, the wisdom, goodness and power
of God ; or that the personal Logos, or perhaps
Spirit, of God was in a peculiar sense united with
him and made him the organ of his personal self-
revelation and operation In the world. According
to the first' view, our Lord was one person and that
a human person ; it was only his Ufe and character
and conduct which by the grace of God in him were
divine ; /i€ was a man. According to the second
view, he was necessarily two persons in one; he was
(i) the particular man or human person with whom
the divine Person had entered into union, and (2) he
was the divine Person of whom the other was only
the human organ or medium of self-revelation and
communication. Now after the Nicene Council and its thorough
confirmation In the Constantinopolitan, no one who
was in any sort of union or sympathy with the mind
of the church could hold any view of the primary
humanity of Christ. The person of our Lord, in per
fect harmony with his own self-consciousness and
with the scriptural conception and representation of
him, had In the mind of the church assumed such
a universal, theological and cosmological as well as

1 82 The Ecumenical Councils.
human significance, that It was Impossible to regard
him otherwise than as primarily a divine Person. He
was not a man who had received God into himself
but God who had taken man Into hiraself, not a man
who had become God but God who had become
man. Of this primary deity and only secondary human
ity of the Lord the victorious Nicene theology was
full; and no one more so than ApoUInaris. Now it
will be readily seen that at such a moment It would
be impossible at once, at least from the Athanasian
side, to render to the humanity all that was due to
It, to enter fully Into all the significance of the func
tion of the human side In the joint divine and hu
man process of salvation. And yet It was necessary
that the human part as well as the divine should
be recognized, and recognized In all its totality.
Salvation is a divine act ; it is primarily a divine act.
That God redeems, sanctifies and spiritually com
pletes is as essential a part of his divine svipyeia In
the universe as that he creates. Indeed it is the
same, it is that higher spiritual creation In which he
completes and reveals the natural, and explains, vin
dicates and justifies all his works. The incarnation
of the Logos In the spiritual redemption and glorifi
cation of personal humanity is only the continuation
and interpretation of his whole cosmlcal and natural
activity in the inanimate, irrational and Impersonal
creation. Through the evolution of the universe
God comes to himself in man ; there Is no lower self
hood or personality in which he could manifest him
self personally. Fulfilling himself through all, he

The End of the Incarnation. 1 83
only fulfils himself In that In which it is possible for
him to be himself. For God is essentially not sub
stance or force or energy ; all these he could be in
an Impersonal and inanimate world. He Is reason,
freedom, love and personahty, and all these he
could become only in a world of reasonable, free and
loving persons, who are his children and in whom he
reproduces and fulfils himself. All this will one day
be a scientific fact as well as a religious truth, — In
the day when all the things of the spirit shall be
come verifiable facts of observation and experience,
objects of sight and not only intuitions of faith. Then
it shall be seen that the ultimate truth of universal
evolution is that the natural Is completed In the spir
itual ; that God through all nature comes to himself
in man — not the man who Is but a part, though the
highest part, of nature, but the man who Is also the
Incarnation of personal Godhead. In Christ the
church sees Indeed a man, but not only a man; It
sees all men and the whole creation taken up Into
and made one with God, through God's own fulfiU-
ing himself In them. When Christ Is complete, the
teaching of Christianity is that God will be all in all,
and all will be In God, and yet not cease to be itself
but only truly begin to be itself In him. But God
does not fulfil himself In nature through violation
of the uniformity or limitation of the universaUty of
nature's own laws. He fulfils himself in It and not
in suspensions or contradictions of it. And in human
ity as a whole God wIU incarnate himself In the re
demption, sanctification and exaltation of itself, and
not merely in activities in or through it which are

184 The Ecumenical Councils.
not itself. So precisely In our Lord, the end of the
divinity In the humanity is not to take Its place and
do something Instead of it; it is simply to supply
the conditions and impart the means by which it shall
completely and perfectly become Itself. The divinity
of Jesus Christ is seen In the realization and reality
of the humanity in which It is incarnate, and not in
the displacement of It or the substitution of some
thing else for it.
This side of the truth of Christ Is what ApoUInaris
Ignored. In his view the humanity of our Lord
wholly disappears in his deity; or rather It never
truly appears, nor plays any essential part in the
drama of the incarnation. There is an Infinite sig
nificance In what God is and does In the visibility of
his humanity, but none whatever In what humanity
does and becomes in the person of Jesus Christ.
Passing by however for the present what was
lacking In the system of ApoUInaris, let us look at
what there was in It of truth and of permanent value
for the knowledge of the person of Christ. ApoUi
naris saw first and saw with no little depth and pene
tration that the incarnation so far from being an
unnatural or Irrational thought was the very truth
of both nature and reason. He who was from eter
nity the divine thought and wUl and purpose of the
creation, and of Its personal and spiritual culmination
In man who was to be the end and fulfilment at once
of it and of himself, was from eternity predestined to
incarnation. What was the Logos in the universe
but the Ideation of man, what was man but the ac-
tuaUzation of the Logos? The Logos was eternal

The Eternal Humanity of the Son. 185
humanity, the eternal Idea of humanity which was
to be actualized In time through the creation. The
true end and destiny of man is to be that which the
Logos will become when he shall through the crea
tion have actualized himself in time. The Logos
and man are then the eternal and the temporal of
one and the same thing ; the Logos Is man, the eter
nal of him; and man Is the Logos, the temporal of
him. So that each in becoming the other is only
becoming himself; the eternal Logos temporally In
and through creation realizes or becomes himself In
man ; and man who temporally reaUzes the Logos In
himself eternally reaUzes or becomes himself in the
Logos. The Incarnation is accidentally, because of
the fact of sin and the fall, human redemption ; It Is
essentially, and would be if there were no sin or fall,
human and cosmlcal completion; because humanity
and the whole creation in It Is complete only as it
realizes its divine Idea and law, which is that through
incarnation the eternal personal Logos shaU reaUze
or become anew himself in It. What was to be ac
compUshed for and In all men through the generic
Incarnation of the Logos, through the whole of crea
tion and in the whole of humanity, could only be so
by means of his particular incarnation in the Individ
ual person of Jesus Christ. For Christ is not only
Individual but generic man. He Is not only a man
but all men, who are to be Included In him In the
church which is the body of the Incarnation and In
which the Logos Is to realize or anew become him
self. ApoUinaris In this way teaches the eternal
humanity of the Son of God, as also therefore, in

1 86 The Ecumenical Councils.
Idea at least, the eternal divinity of man ; and so the
eternal predestination and preconstitution of the
Logos and man to become one In the Incarnate
Son, both God and man.
The great and comprehensive truth contained In
this representation might have been carried out with
substantial orthodoxy and with no Uttle gain to the
theology that preceded it. If it had been within the
grasp of a single mind, and that the first to deal sci
entifically with the most difficult of problems, to see
all the sides and provide for all the interests involved.
That God must become man, must personally realize
or become anew himself in the highest of his crea
tures, from the very nature and necessity of the
divine Word to become that which It means, to ac
tualize itself In that of which It is the Idea, was a great _
thought. What he needed next to see and to say
was that God can be or can fulfil himself In anything
or In any person only In the own being and self-ful
filment of the thing or the person. He cannot be In
it to efface or destroy it, to make it not Itself or save
It from the necessity of being or becoming its own
self. He cannot be In nature to make It not nature,
or in man to make him not man. It Is perfectly true
that man can only fulfil or become himself as he ful
fils the Logos, and that he can only do so as the
Logos fulfils him by fulfilling or becoming himself in
him. But the self-realization of the divine Logos In
man must not be at the cost or at any diminution or
detriment of the part which man must take In realiz
ing the Logos, for it Is in this that he realizes and
becom.es himself. In other words the divinity must

Christ the Realization of Htimanity. 187
not be at the expense of the humanity In a process
the end of which is that the divine Word Is to accom
plish Itself In the highest being or becoming of man.
The Incarnation must be the supreme deed and attain
ment of humanity as well as of deity. Man In It must
become his completest, highest and fullest self. If on
the contrary God Is to take the place of him or of any
part of him. If he Is to be to him in any way instead of
himself, or to spare him any trouble or pain of being
himself or himself becoming himself, then the incar
nation is no true human redemption and completion,
for God Is In him to his hurt and not help, to his
diminution and not increase. It Is as necessary that
the man himself and all the man shall be In the In
carnation as that God shall be In It. And that is
what the church fathers did not yet fully see, though
they implicitly held It and in terms asserted it and
instinctively as in the case of ApoUInaris condemned
and rejected any denial of It. It is easy to realize
as they did that In Christ we are in God — in the
divine atonement, redemption and eternal life — to
accept his part In the total and consummated results
which he has wrought in our nature, without equally
realizing the significance and necessity of the human
part, in a reahzed and actual spiritual freedom and
life of ourselves in God. And In Jesus Christ what
that age — Uke our own — needed most to see In him,
because it saw it least, was not the divine fact of God
incarnate but the human fact of man redeemed, hu
manity free from sin and ahve from death. And if
in him we see not only the freedom but the redemp
tion, or becoming free, and not only the life but the

1 88 The Ecumenical Councils.
resurrection or making alive of humanity — then the
humanity he assumed, to redeem and raise from the
dead, was that which needed to find in him its free
dom and life.
It Is beside our purpose as It would be impossible
In so brief a space to give an outhne of the system
of ApoUInaris which should at once expose its defects
and errors and do justice to its depth and truth.
Our aim Is not an historical exposition of successive
theological or Christological systems, but only the
illustration through them of the principles which
entered successively into the constitution and evo
lution of the true doctrine of the person of Christ.
ApoUInaris was one and perhaps the greatest of
those who taught an incomplete humanity of our
Lord, and who must be ranked on the Docetic side
of the truth of Christology. It would not however
be as just as it might seem to dismiss him with the
charge of teaching that the Logos assumed in his
human birth only a natural body and animal soul,
whUe the place of that higher part in us which we
call the spirit was supplied by himself, and that
therefore our Lord had no truly human rational and
spiritual nature. For we must remember that he
held that the Logos was himself human, that he was
the eternal higher or spiritual truth or side of human
ity, who in order to become like us and as one of us
needed only to assume the material or natural of
which he was already the supernatural or spiritual.
From his point of view he could claim to hold the
very completest and fuUest humanity of our Lord,
because he held him to be the heavenly and divine

Significance of Redemption. 189
fulness and completeness of It. He was the eternal
humanity who only needed to take to himself the
lower accidents of our material and mundane condi
tion in order to become like us, and by redeeming
us from these make us like himself. If then he as
sumed not all but only some and the lower elements
of a human nature in his birth Into the world. It was
because he already possessed or rather was In him
self its highest element, and only needed these lower
ones in order to enter into our temporal and earthly
condition. We may not perhaps then be able to say that the
Christ of ApoUInaris was not a true and complete
man in all the actual as well as ideal truth of human
nature, but the objection which may not lie here lies
elsewhere with equal force. To the Docetlsrn which
in whole or In part impairs the completeness and re
ality of our Lord's human nature and life, we say :
Of what use or interest is it to us, beyond that of a
mere exhibition or external representation, that God
and not man, that God under a semblance of human
ity should present to us a spectacle of human victory
over sin and sorrow and death ? What we want Is
not a divine Ideal but a human actuaUty of these
things. We want to see ourselves who groan under
the bondage of sin and death free from sin and ahve
from death. Show us this in Christ and we will see
In him a real, because our own, redemption and res
urrection. We beHeve in a divine redemption but
only In one that exhibits Itself In an actual human
freedom. We believe that in Christ God redeems,
but only because we see in Christ, in Christ's own

190 The Ectimenical Councils.
sinlessness and hoUness, that man is free. And man
can be only freely free ; It must be the freedom of
himself, of his own will and his whole self. It must
be himself fulfilHng God's wUl as weU as God's wiU
fulfilhng itself in him. Jesus Christ Is redemption
both active and passive. He is divine redemption
manifested In human redemption, God's freeing re
vealed in man's freedom. If Jesus Christ were not as
man free from sin and risen from the dead, we should
not accept him as God freeing from sin and raising
from the dead. The cause Is seen only In the effect,
and the effect exists only in the cause.
Now ApoUinaris, appreciating the Christian de
mand that the incarnate Son of God must be really
and completely human, makes him so indeed in a
sense which in terms cannot be denied. The person
and personal life of Jesus are certainly in the highest
sense human, but it is only because the divine Logos
is himself eternally, and independently of his Incar
nation, human. And what humanity Is this of his
which Is so holy and living and divine? It is only
one which was so before, which Is inherently and
essentially and necessarily so and never had been or
could be otherwise. What redemption then has he
wrought, what sanctification Imparted, what glorifi
cation accomplished ? The holiness, the life of Jesus,
what was it but the mere display of the perfections
if not of God only, yet of a divine. Ideal, eternal
humanity — very different from that which the Son
of God came to seek and save, to sanctify from
sin and raise up out of death. No, what we want
and what we find In the holiness and the life of

Christ's Humanity Ours. 191
Jesus is not that of a divine humanity which knows
nothing of sin and death, but that of our own earthly
poor and sinful humanity which he stooped to lift
out of the mire and the grave and Infinitely to
quicken and enrich with himself. And as he took
nothing other than ourselves, so he has not exalted
us at the expense or cost of ourselves. As our
whole humanity was present and acted in him, arose
and walked, believed and lived, obeyed and was holy,
put off Itself and put on God, arose from the dead
and ascended up Into heaven, so in losing we but
find ourselves In him; he in no sense or measure
takes the place of ourselves, but himself becomes our
true selves and fulfils us In fulfilling himself in us.
The difficulty with ApoUinaris as with most Chris
tians now is that he was so concerned that our Lord
should be God that he was not sufficiently wilUng
he should be man. Under the shadow of a great
and valuable truth he contrives that he shall be man
without the humiliation of becoming the man which
nevertheless divine love came Into this world to be
and was. He brought his human hoHness along with
him when he came; as many of us fancy that the
Holy Ghost was sent before mechanicaUy and mirac
ulously to prepare it for him in our flesh before he
came, lest he should be contaminated by contact
with human unhollness — not knowing that he came
himself to take our unhoHness and make us holy, to
take upon him our defilement and make us clean.
Not of course to take it in himself, but upon himself;
he took our sin and death upon him in assuming our
flesh ; he redeemed us from sin and death in his cru-

192 The Ecumenical Councils.
clfixion of the sin and resurrection from the death of
our flesh.
A reference to the origin and motive of ApoUi
narianism wUl throw additional light upon the matter.
ApoUInaris developed his system in opposition partly
to the Arianism that preceded and partly to the Nes
torianism that was to succeed him and that In prin
ciple though not yet In historical form was already
beginning to appear. In opposing Arianism on one
side ApoUinaris fell unconsciously Into Its error on
the other. To Arius, in the first place, our Lord was
the incarnation of a superhuman but not a divine
person, and secondly he was incarnate in not a real
humanity ; his whole earthly activity was that of the
superhuman and not of a human being. ApoUInaris
antagonizing the first of these positions fell himself
into the second. He demonstrates the natural neces
sity of an incarnation of the divine Logos or Son
himself ; but he conceives his Incarnation In a human
ity not a whit more actual or real than that of Arius.
The activity of our Lord is solely a divine one, or
human only in so far as there is an aspect of human
ity In the divine Logos himself.
We shall see how the great school of Antioch had
a tendency from the beginning to stand for the
human aspect of our Lord, as that of Alexandria did
for the divine. About contemporaneously with
ApoUinaris, Diodorus of Tarsus was originating those
views of our Lord's person which in the beginning
of the next century were to result in the Nestorian
heresy. The Antiochians made so much of the hu
manity of our Lord, they dwelt so much especially

opposition to Nestorianism. 193
upon the personal elements In his human life, as
practically and with some of them actually and avow
edly to make him a human person. Now our Lord
is without question a divine person, and if he is also
a human person then he is a conjunction of two per
sons and not only one person in two natures. This
is the doctrine of the dual personahty of our Lord
which was beginning to loom up and of which Apol
linarianism was the deadly antagonist.
To ApoUinaris It seemed inevitable that if we con
cede to our Lord a complete human nature in the
sense of not only body and soul but also spirit. If we
make him man In the complete sense in which we
are, then we make him a human person as well as a
divine one and so two persons. Moreover If he is
man like us, then he has a human and a free will and
is mutable (rpEnrog) or capable of sin. But we must
think not only of the Logos but of his humanity as
above this, and of the redeeming work of God as so
divine as to be free from any human contingency
or possibiUty of miscarriage. And so, to avoid any
such consequence, he lifts up the humanity into the
divinity ; he makes it in Itself so divine that there is
nothing of our humanity left In It at all — nothing of
the humanity which our Lord actually assumed In
order that he might purge and cleanse It by himself
and present it to himself all-glorious, without spot or
wrinkle. We do not mean to say that the motive of Apol-
linarls was not a right one, and that there was not a
necessity for something to be done to conserve the
unity of our Lord's person ; but only that he did too

194 The Ecumenical Councils.
much and went too far on the other side. Though
we say that our Lord Is very God and also that he is
very man, we cannot say that he is two. We might
even find it necessary to say that he is a divine per
son and that he is also a human person (which is
identical with saying that he Is a man, or to speak
of the man Christ Jesus) ; but we cannot mean by
that that he is two persons but only that he Is a person
who Is both divine and human, and personally both ;
that Is that he Is one person in two natures or modes
of being. To ApoUinaris this seemed Impossible ;
two, he said, cannot be one. The difficulty Is a very
real one and will give us trouble enough, as it gave
the church for several centuries without being solved
at the end of them. But ApoUinaris's mode of get
ting rid of it will do no better than the old Docetic
expedient of denying the human outright. The fact
simply is that the actual and historical Jesus Christ,
the Christ of the gospels and the church, was a man
with a human will and human freedom, who by the
grace of God through his human faith overcame sin
and destroyed death; and so redeemed and exalted
human nature and human Hfe to its true human des
tiny of oneness with God and eternal life ; and In his
humanity which is ours, once sinful and now holy,
once dead and now alive, we all are now sanctified
and risen. The true Christian explanation of this
act and fact is, that as It is human so also is it divine,
and that there could have been no such human act
that was not divine ; that Jesus Christ as man so re
alized or exhibited in himself the divine reality of
humanity because as God he so humanly realized

Tendency to Monophysitism. 195
himself In humanity. And moreover not only was
the complete humanity of our Lord an historical fact,
but only as human could he have been really divine.
God fulfils himself in and not Instead of or as a sub
stitute for his works, whether they are natural or
spiritual. We repeat that a redeeming God only
reveals himself in redeemed humanity.
Of course according to ApoUinaris since our Lord
brought his humanity and his human holiness with him
Into the world, he was complete from the first; he
had no real Infancy or growth ; he learned nothing,
acquired nothing, encountered and overcame no real
temptation, was In no true sense made perfect by the
things he suffered nor really touched with any feel
ing of our Infirmity. He may have been perfect God
and in ApoUinaris's sense perfect man, — but he was
no perfecting God for he perfected nothing, nor per
fected man for he was perfected in nothing. But to
take away this is to take away the very end of the
divine Incarnation and aU the meaning of human re
demption and completion in and through it.
ApoUinarianism was the forerunner of all the Mo
nophysitism of the succeeding centuries. In deny
ing the double personality he denied along with It
the double nature of our Lord. The eternal divine-
human or human-divine of the Logos In his view
expresses only two aspects or sides of a single nature,
as on the one hand it comes eternally from God as
Its origin, and on the other looks forward to human
ity as Its end. Jesus Christ is throughout one per
son, one nature, one activity, not the atonement and
oneness of God and man.

196 The Ecumenical Councils.
The element of truth In Monophysitism is not that
the divine and the human natures even in our Lord
are the same; that the divine is human and the
human divine, as ApoUInaris taught; or that In the
union they become the same, as the Monophysites
taught ; but that there is a natural relation or affinity
between them which predestinates and predetermines
them to a union and unity of the two. The divine
Logos is predestined to take the natural and the hu
man Into himself and the human to receive the divine
of the Logos Into itself. It is the nature of God as
love and fulness to communicate and fulfil himself In
his creation as It becomes capable of receiving him.
It Is the nature of man as creation's crown of sus-
ceptlbihty and conscious need of God to be taken
into personal and free union and unity with him.
This truth had been seen by the church fathers long
before ApoUinaris ; by Irenasus, TertuUian, and Ath
anasius especially. Athanasius speaks much of an
evioaig (pvaiKj}, a natural unity, of the divine and the
human In Christ. " Bearing the Image of the Logos
and destined for him, humanity arrives at the actual
ity of Its possibility, at the substance of Its form. In a
word at Its perfection, when the Logos enters into
vital unity with it." "As Its archetype, one aspect
of the Logos' own essence stood in affinity with hu
manity, and called for manifestation in actuality.
This actuality was acquired bythe Logos when having
connected himself with the man Jesus he set forth in
him the perfected humanity. Accordingly the evuaig
(pvaiKrj is that union which is demanded by the essence
or conception of both, and in which the idea of both

The Humanity not yet Defined. 197
first attains realization; — humanity, because Its na
ture remained Imperfect, Its creation as it were Incom
plete, without the Incarnation; deity, because even
Its nature, to wit, its ethical nature, could not satisfy
itself until it became man " (Dorner, on Athanasius).
The difference between this truth and ApoUinarian
ism is that while according to the former the divine
and human come naturally to union in the earthly
Incarnation of the Logos ; according to the latter the
divine merely brought into the world. In a Docetic
and unreal Incarnation, an Ideal humanity which it
had always possessed.
But when ApoUinaris presented the alternative of
his own view, and charged that a whole deity and a
whole humanity In Christ were two and could by no
possibility be one, and not only two natures but two
persons, — the theologians of the fourth century were
not prepared at once to refute this by presenting the
true solution of this new difficulty. They had reflec
tively vindicated and stated the divine nature and
personality of the Lord. They held, as yet only In
tuitively though just as firmly, the true humanity
and were as ready to affirm it. They knew that he
was perfect God and perfect man, but how to combine
the two natures In a single person without detriment
to either was not the task of that century but of
another, and much more than another.
It was natural that the age which had with such
abihty and with so much difficulty and suffering
stood for the side of the real divinity of the Lord
should unconsciously and unintentionally feel and
appreciate less the Importance, In Its detaUs as well

198 The Ecumenical Councils.
as in its totality, of a scientific analysis and construc
tion of the real humanity. But besides this, we have
seen that the Greek genius, and much more so in
Alexandria than in Antioch, predisposed It rather to the
ideal than to the actual and practical side of religious
truth. Christianity was naturally to the Greek much
more an activity, a revelation, of God In man than
an activity, a redemption and freedom, of man in
God. He was more disposed therefore to dwell upon
what God was and did than upon what man was and
did in Jesus Christ. The theologians of the fourth
century, filled with the Trinitarian questions and
decisions and, through the transcendent influence of
Athanasius, being of the Alexandrian rather than
the Antlochian temperament, did not feel aU the dif
ficulties of combining a real humanity with the real
divinity of the Lord. ApoUinaris Indeed In his pre
mature and one-sided thought was only exposing a
tendency which existed In themselves, though they
did not permit it to run into heretical expression and
condemned it when it did so in him. For while they
held the real humanity as a whole, they were uncon
sciously not holding It in all its details or In all the
parts that were necessary to the integrity of the
whole. Jesus Christ was God and man, but he was
with them, too, so overpoweringly and controUingly
God that he was very Infinltesimally man. The hu
manity In the Godhead was as a drop of honey in
the ocean. In the overwhelming self-fulfilment of
God in man there was very little self-realization of
man in God. The human consciousness, will and

Christianity more than a Revelation. 199
freedom, the human becoming-divine of the man
Christ Jesus, all but disappear in the omnipotent and
Irresistible becoming-man of the divine person. But,
as we have so often said, God does not really be
come man, he only remains himself. In a manhood
which does not also Itself humanly, freely and person
ally become divine. It is not in the material body
but in the human will and freedom. In the human
righteousness and life, of Jesus Christ that the Logos
most truly and savingly Incarnates himself. No mat
ter what the danger of falling Into the error of a dual
personality, or the difficulty of ascribing to our one
Lord the whole activity of God and the whole activ
ity of man, we must not get over it by making hu
man salvation any less an act of man In God than an
act of God In man.
Christianity may be viewed as a revelation of God
In man; or It may be viewed as an actualization or
realization of God in man. If the first aspect Is dwelt
upon too exclusively, the part of the man in it wUl
be made too little of. It wUl be even of secondary
or no importance that the man, the humanity, shall
be a real one at all, if only the revelation Is made, or
the Idea conveyed. But the end of God in Christ Is
not to show God but to save man ; it is not even the
truth of God except as the means to the redemption,
freedom and life of man. What God has done in
Christ is to be read simply and solely in what man
has become In Christ.
In saying that Athanasius and his school, which
means the theology of the fourth century, repre-

200 The Ecumenical Councils.
sented this tendency to the Ideal rather than to the
actual, to the divine rather than the human, side of
the Incarnation, we are only saying that they did not
work out both sides of the truth with equal clearness
and thoroughness; that something remained to be
done by others.

CHAPTER X.
NESTORIANISM.
HE theology which ApoUinaris had ap
prehended and in part anticipated was
not long In making its appearance. In
deed it was already in suspense and was
immediately precipitated by his attack.
Nestorianism and ApoUinarianism are simply the op
posite extremes In the Christian thought we have
been endeavoring to depict, and are each only the
denial of the other. We shall find after this that
every attempt to discriminate the human from the
divine in the person of the Lord is Uable to be
branded with iNfestorlanism ; and every effort to em
phasize the unity of the human with the divine, with
ApoUinarianism. And this, because Nestorius did
undoubtedly divide the aspects to the destruction of
a real unity, as ApoUinaris united them to the effaee
ment of any real distinction.
Nestorianism had as to its origin and development
comparatively Uttle to do with Nestorius, In whose
person It was afterward condemned and by whose
name It has become known. It had been slowly
growing for a long time in a congenial soil. And we
must see In Its origination quite as true and necessary

202 The Ecumenical Councils.
a motive as we discovered in ApoUinarianism, though
it resulted in quite as wide an error and heresy.
Indeed we shall find Its motive just in an exag
geration of the objections which in behalf of the
church Itself we have already presented to the sys
tem of Apollinarianism.
The two great patriarchates of the East, before
they were both overshadowed by Constantinople,
seemed to be naturally constituted to represent the
opposite Interests of Christianity. We have seen
how from the first Alexandria made itself the repre
sentative and champion of the divinity, while Antioch
quite as consistently espoused the cause of the hu
manity of the Lord. The characteristics of the two
schools quite remarkably fitted them for these oppo
site functions. The temper of Antioch was scientific
and rational ; it seized upon the human and natural
elements of Christianity and saw in it the meaning
and truth of man and of the world. That of Alex
andria was spiritual, Intuitive and theological ; to it
Christianity was the revelation and manifestation of
God. The difference was best shown in their meth
ods of biblical interpretation. The exegesis of Old
and New Testaments which was the forte and pride
of the great teachers of Antioch was literal, gram
matical and historical ; the exposition of Clement,
Origen and their successors in Alexandria was alle
gorical and mystical. At Antioch the question was,
what did the human authors intend to say ; at Alex
andria what did the Holy Ghost mean to convey.
It would be unjust to claim that ApoUinaris repre
sented the Alexandrian school, but he did represent

The School of Antioch. 203
their side or tendency carried to Its extreme. That
extreme was to represent Jesus Christ as essentiaUy
divine, with certain human predicates which however
fell very far short of a complete and real humanity.
The opposite or Antlochian extreme was to represent
him as essentiaUy human, with certain divine predicates
which fell equally short of a real and personal deity.
The school of Antioch culminated at the close of
the fourth century, after Diodorus of Tarsus, In his
great pupil and disciple Theodore of Mopsuestia, re
garded In the East as the greatest of biblical scholars
and commentators, and the real founder so far as
there was one of the organized tendency which was
to become known as Nestorianism. When we say
that any sincerely and genuinely Christian theologian
— as undoubtedly ApoUinaris and Theodore were, on
opposite sides, — represented one side of the com
mon truth of Christianity, It Is not to be Inferred that
he consciously denied the other. This is especially
true at that time of the very inception of Christolog
ical science, when although there was a church truth
there was not yet a church doctrine of the person of
Christ. But at the end of the fourth century no the
ology could have originated within the church which
did not Intend to hold, and believe itself to hold, the
reahty of both the divinity and the humanity in a
real Incarnation. We only mean to Illustrate the fact
that nothing short of a cathoUc doctrine, a doctrine
of the mind of the church as a whole, could be broad
enough and comprehensive enough to embrace at
once on aU Its sides the totality of the truth of Jesus
Christ, and that prior to such a doctrine no one the-

204 The Ecumenical Councils.
ologian did or could so hold the whole truth as not
unconsciously to deny or mutilate some one part In
the supposed Interest of some other part. If Athana
sius himself, who could so clearly see and so exactly
define the divinity of the Lord and who unquestion
ably equally affirmed his humanity, had undertaken
to define the latter also in terms of the then know
ledge of It, In aU its essential elements and detaUs, he
certainly would not have done it to the permanent
satisfaction of the Christian consciousness. He and
his contemporaries, holding it in Its unresolved to
taUty, wisely left its analysis and definition to be
worked out as it was in the church's gradual and
wise rejection of the opposite errors and reconcilia
tion of the opposite truths of ApoUinarianism and
Nestorianism; just as their own Trinitarianism had
been the outcome of the long struggle between the
opposing principles of SabeUianism and Arianism.
Theodore of Mopsuestia then approached the ques
tion of our Lord's person from the Antiochlan, that
is to say from the human side. As ApoUInaris had
undertaken to show how the incarnate Logos Is man,
so Theodore undertook to show how the man Christ
Jesus is God. And with the widest differences their
methods are similar in one respect. ApoUInaris
proves an Inherent and eternal humanity in the deity
of the Logos, Theodore establishes an essential and
natural divinity In the humanity of the man Jesus
Christ. His anthropology Is peculiar and must be
somewhat understood In explanation of his Christol
ogy. In a somewhat modernized form we may give
Its substance as follows :

Theodore of Mopsuestia. 205
The whole creation Is naturally to culminate In
man, who Is not only Its head but who recapitulates,
reconciles and unifies It aU In himself, as Its summary
or epitome. As In him spirit and matter apparently
so opposite and contradictory unite in one human
nature, so it was natural that all the contrarieties of
the whole universe should eventually meet and be
reconciled in him, in an all-comprehending unity.
Indeed in him the Infinite and the finite, eternity
and time, God and the creation, were met and were
destined to be harmonized. Man is by nature the
cosmic god, the image and likeness of the absolute
and hypercosmic God. But he was all this not
merely physically and naturally but spiritually and
morally ; and so he was to become it not by a merely
natural and necessary evolution but in the exercise
and development of his personal and free spirit. In
other words, man's place and part In the world as Its
natural bond and unity was to be accomplished by a
process in which humanity was spiritually as well as
physically at once to realize itself and the whole cre
ation In Itself. In this humanity had failed, and Its
failure to accomplish its natural high function and
destiny Is sin, which breaks up the harmony of the
universe and reduces everything to discord and con
tradiction. As the bondage of creation came through
man's sin, so its freedom can be restored only through
man's redemption from sin. But man's redemption,
while it can come only from God, can come only
through and in himself and can consist only In the
restoration of the freedom and abUity of his own will
and personality to discharge his function by realizing

2o6 The Ecumenical Councils.
himself and completing and perfecting the world.
Only man, the cosmic gpd, himself restored and
completed, can restore and complete the cosmos In
the image and hkeness of the absolute God. There
fore when the heavenly Logos, whose earthly image
man is, comes down to redeem and restore him, his
presence and operation in him are not at the expense
of the freedom or the personality or personal activity
of the man; for these are just what he is come to
restore. The Logos, according to Theodore, might be con
ceived as entering into man in Jesus Christ either
KaY bvaiav, or Kar' kvipyeiav, or Ka~' kvSoKiav, — either
by natural or essential union, or by union of power
and operation, or by personal union or the free union
and unity of spirits and wIUs. The first is Impossi
ble ; the infinite and omnipresent essence and nature
of God cannot be contracted to that of a man. It
cannot be the second, for the power and activity of
God are in all things and this would not distinguish
Christ from all other persons and things. It can
only be the third, the union of the divine good will
and satisfaction with the perfect faith and holy obe
dience of the man Christ Jesus. The union therefore
of God and man, the divine Logos and his human
image, in Jesus Christ is a union of wills, of spirits,
of personalities. Human personality must not be
obliterated and supplanted in Jesus Christ; It must
be redeemed and completed by the restoration to it
of its freedom, power and efficiency. The human in
Christ is not simply a predicate or quaUty of the di
vine, It is something In Itself ; the divine In It Is not

Our Lord's Dual Personality. 207
Instead of it but for the sake of It, not to diminish
but to Increase it. " I am come that ye may have
life, and that ye may have It more abundantly."
The human in our Lord Is therefore above all things
personal and free and complete. Whether or not
It might have been possible for Theodore to pre
serve the essential and vital truth in his system with
out involving a duality of persons In his conception
of our Lord, he certainly did not succeed in doing
so. It seemed to him vital that our Lord should be
a human person, a man In whom humanity should
recover its place and function in the world and so
restore or attain the unity, harmony and consumma
tion of the universe. With the man Jesus Christ
through whom this was to be accomplished, the
Logos, whose image or cosmic self he was to be,
united himself, became one ; not, as we have said,
bvoia, — so as himself to become homoousion with us,
— nor evBpyha, by mere operation In him ; but svdoida,
by the spiritual and moral unity of consenting and
harmonious wills and spirits. The Logos did not Ut
erally become flesh or man, but only figuratively did
so in that he entered into a spiritual and moral union
and unity with the man Christ Jesus. The man was
not the Logos but only one with him, and the Logos
was not the man but only one with him. Spiritually
and moraUy they were one person, essentially they
were two persons, a divine and a human, become one
in wUl and act. Not otherwise than thus did it seem
possible to Theodore to preserve in the unity of the
Incarnation the necessary freedom, completeness and
relative independence of the human factor. In this

2o8 The Ecum,enical Councils.
way the distinction of the two factors is most cer
tainly obtained ; whether It was not at the price of the
loss of their unity there can be with us no question ;
but we need not doubt. Indeed no one acquainted
with Theodore himself can doubt, that he believed
himself to have secured that too and to hold the
catholic doctrine.
Of course the difficulty begins when we ask our
selves who and what this particular human person Is
who was to be one with the divine Person, and
through whom humanity and the whole creation
were to be restored to unity and harmony. It was
necessary that It should be a person, and, that God
should foreknow that it would be, who would as
freely and yet as infallibly unite himself or be united
with the Logos as the Logos with him ; for the union
begins In and is perfect from the moment of the con
ception in the womb, and yet Is throughout free on
both sides and the act of both persons. If the
human person is truly human he must have a human
growth and progress under human laws and condi
tions, and must continuously himself will to be one
with the Logos, as the Logos wiUs to be one with
him. In this way human salvation is not only a
double act, but the act of two persons willing and
acting as one. If we ask how It was that this espe
cial person was thus enabled from the first and all
throughout to be one with the Logos and so to effect
human redemption, Theodore's answer was that in
the fact of his miraculous birth there was Imparted
to him the advantage of a special fitness or affinity,
without impairment of his real humanity and free-

A Gnomic Unity, 209
dom ; and that his union with the Logos and fulness
of the Holy Ghost Insured the rest.
It Is clear enough from the foregoing representa
tion that Theodore held not only that our Lord was
two distinct natures but was two distinct persons, —
the eternal Logos or Son and a man specially con
stituted not merely to be his visible organ and mani
festation but to enter freely and personally Into union
and conjunction with him. The term avvd(j)eca, by
which he expressed this not one-sided but mutual
and free conjunction, was Intended to affirm that God
did not " become " but entered into union with man,
and that personal humanity was as much as personal
deity a party in the union. As marriage makes two
persons one flesh, so in the incarnation of which mar
riage is but a faint reflection and symbol the Logos
and the man become one person. But It is a union
not substantialiter but spiritualiter ; not bvaia or ^voti,
but yvuii-q or ax^oei, by mutual disposition, affinity
and consent.
Of course Theodore made every effort to minimize
the duality and to emphasize the practical unity of
the person of Christ. In fact It is only in such an
analysis of the ultimate constituents of his system
that the duality appears. In his voluminous works
and the general teaching of the school nothing more
would appear than a distinct emphasis of the human
significance of the life and work of the Lord. The
school of Antioch beHeved itself to be asserting the
catholic view of the incarnation against Apollinari
anism In which the human element was reduced to
nothing. And during the life and very wide activity

2IO The Ecumenical Councils.
of Theodore no charge was made by the church
against his teaching, although it was so broadly dis
seminated as to gain him the title of Magister Ori-
entis. He was the intimate and dear friend to the
last of the great Chrysostom, who was of Antioch
and of the same school. Theodore's studies and
teaching were primarily exegetical, and the image of
the human Jesus of the gospels, in its every trait and
detaU, In the simplicity and reality of his very and
complete manhood, was the starting-point of all his
thinking; that Jesus was more and not less man by
reason of his union with the Logos was the principle
of his Christology. To him practically if not essen
tially Christ was one person ; he thought of him not
as mere divine Logos nor as mere human Jesus but
as the two become one In the one will and activity
of the Christ who Is at once Logos and Jesus, God
and man. It Is unnecessary to enter into further
criticism of Theodore's posirion until we get to the
time when the church was forced by the progress of
Christological science to take It up and analyze it,
and to pass judgment upon It. We can see now at
once both the right motive in it and Its final ^and
utter unsatlsfactorlness and untenableness.
Theodore did not seriously object to the applica
tion to the mother of the Lord of the term "Theo-
tocos," the point upon which later the whole issue
was made and the principle Involved analyzed and
exposed. He admitted a limited communicatio idi-
omatum by which. In consequence of the closeness cf
the union and the practical oneness of the Logos and
the man, the predicates of one could be applied to

St. John Chrysostom. 211
the other and we might say that God was born
and suffered and died ; but he deprecated the grow
ing custom of employing such language, which he
thought strained and savoring more of Apollinari
anism than truth. Practically the person born of the
Virgin might be called God, but essentially he was
not God and the Virgin was not Theotocos, mother
of God. More exactly she should be called Chrlsto-
tocos, though literally she was only anthropotocos,
mother of the human nature and personahty in Christ.
It was wholly through the enormous and wide
spread Influence and popularity of Theodore, whom
all the East called master and believed as he believed,
that the subsequently condemned and generally
abandoned Nestorianism yet maintained such a hold
in the farther Orient that it continued for a long
time to overshadow the true faith and has perpet
uated at least Its name to our own times.
It was in the year 381 — that of the Second Gen
eral Council — that John, to be known afterward as
Chrysostom, was ordained deacon In Antioch his
native city, where during the next fifteen or more
years he established that astonishing reputation as a
preacher from which he received his name. In 398
Chrysostom was forcibly removed from Antioch
where he was idoUzed and consecrated bishop of
Constantinople. Chrysostom and Theodore were
feUow-students, first under the great heathen sophist
and rhetorician Libanius and afterward under Dio
dorus bishop of Tarsus, the founder of the later
school of Antioch. Under him they both, we are
told, " learned the common-sense mode of interpret-

212 The Ecumenical Councils.
Ing Holy Scripture (rejecting the allegorizing princi
ple) of which they became such distinguished repre
sentatives." " It is as an expositor of Scripture that
Chrysostom is most deservedly celebrated. His
method of dealing with the divine Word is charac
terized by the sound grammatical and historical
principle and the healthy common sense introduced
by his tutor Diodorus, which mark the exegetical
school of Antioch. He seeks not what the passage
before him may be made to mean, but what it was
intended to mean ; not what recondite truths or les
sons may be forced from It by mystical or allegorical
interpretations, but what It was intended to convey ;
not what may be introduced into it but what may be
elicited from it." Chrysostom was not a theologian
in the sense of having constructed any system of his
own ; he was a preacher and an expositor. And we
do not know at all that his Christology was that of
Theodore, whose practical spirit prevailed much more,
happily, than his speculative errors, as we shall find
in his successor Theodoret. Perhaps he did not go
so deeply into the analysis of the grounds upon which
he held the real humanity as also the real divinity of
the Lord. But In his temper and teaching he was,
behind the ardor of the orator and the outward occu
pations of a practical administrator, most certainly an
Antlochian. Chrysostom's difficult, active and pain
ful administration of the see of Constantinople was
terminated by his overthrow and exile. And after an
interval under other successors of some twenty years,
during which the memory and influence of his great
ness and hoUness had deeply Impressed Itself, his seat

Nestorius. 213

there was, less fortunately or happily, filled by an
other representative of the school of Antioch, Nesto
rius a pupil and disciple of Theodore of Mopsuestia.
Nestorius was of the personal disposition and was
now in a position to bring forward and obtrude upon
the general viev/, in the most aggressive way, the
principles which had peacefully pervaded the patri
archate of Antioch. He was zealous for orthodoxy,
as he beHeved, and uniformity ; and he lost no time
In setting about enforcing them. In his very first
sermon he boldly addressed the emperor in an appeal
to cooperate with him to that end : " Give me, O
prince, the earth purged of heretics, and I will give
you heaven as a recompense." Whereupon, with or
without the emperor, there ensued a general suppres
sion and expulsion of Arians, Novatians, Quartodeci-
mans, Macedonians, and so on. Under the term
" orthodoxy," Nestorius was ambitious to extend and
make universal the principles of his master Theodore
and had brought with him as his chaplain a theologian
of Antioch, more zealous and perhaps more learned
than himself. To this man, Anastasius, and to Nes
torius the prevailing church doctrine outside of the
Influence of Antioch seemed to be mere ApoUinari
anism, with which it was necessary to make some
decided and positive issue in behalf of the truth of
the church.
The is.sue was joined and the gauntiet publicly
thrown down by Anastasius in a discourse In the ca
thedral in which he exclaimed: "Let no man caU
Mary Theotocos, for Mary was but a woman and It
is impossible that God should be born of a woman."

214 The Ecumenical Councils.
The new position thus enunciated was pubhcly in
dorsed, defended and expanded by the bishop himself
In a series of sermons.
The point made was intended for the whole church,
and so the whole church came not merely to investi
gate the propriety or impropriety of the title " Theo
tocos," but gradually to call into question the funda
mental principles of the theology of Antioch. The
term "Theotocos" was by no means a new one; It
had had the very highest sanction for its use in the
church and was familiar everywhere. To the theolo
gians of the Alexandrian school it was very expressive
as emphasizing the divine personality of the Lord.
It was naturally distasteful to those of Antioch, as at
least an exaggeration and as ignoring or denying the
human personality. In addition to Its important
bearing upon the question of the person of Christ
it had become more popular through the growing
veneration and worship of the Blessed Virgin, whose
person and office it magnified. For this reason and
in the interest of peace and harmony Theodore had
withheld any objection to Its use, contenting himself
with what he deemed the necessary explanations.
Nestorius however evidently thought that the time
was past for compromise, and on this word the Issue
was made and the battle of the Third General Council
begun. The challenge was quickly accepted on the other
side, and just where and as might have been expected.
The battle-field was Constantinople but the contes
tants were the two rival patriarchates. Indeed there
had been an old contention between them for the

The Counter- School of Alexandria. 215
control of the potent influence of the Eastern capital.
It had been their Interference In Its affairs, their at
tempts to Influence Its episcopal successions and their
meddling with its disputes which probably Influenced
the action of the Second General Council in giving It
precedence over them. But that did not at once
mend the evil. On the occasion of the appointment
of John Chrysostom, Theophilus the overbearing and
violent bishop of Alexandria had had his candidate,
and was only brought by imperial compuleion to take
his part in the consecration of an appointee from
Antioch. He soon after placed himself at the head
of the opposition which was gathering against the
high policy and strict discipline of Chrysostom, and
devoted the energies of a most determined character
to compassing his downfall. He was indeed person
ally discomfited and defeated and escaped only by
flight the wrath of the people of Constantinople,
whither he never ventured again. But his Intrigues
continued and contributed no little to the overthrow
In the end of the great preacher, saint and bishop ; of
whom Theophilus in his partisan blindness was capable
of believing, and saying in a public invective : " He
was not what he seemed to be ; his guilt transcended
aU possible penalties; in the world to come he wiU
endure an eternal penalty. . . . Christ himself wIU
condemn him to be cast Into outer darkness."
TheophUus had been succeeded In Alexandria by
his nephew Cyril, who In his youth had been with him
In Constantinople in the prosecution of his proceeding
against Chrysostom, and had inherited as he carried
with him through life his uncle's hostile judgment of

2i6 The Ecumenical Councils.
the great preacher. Cyril's own Intemperance and
intolerance had certainly not In the earlier years of
his episcopate fallen short of his predecessors'. His
connection with the excesses and outrages mutually
inflicted and suffered between the Christians and the
heathen and Jewish population of Alexandria, and
especially those associated with the name of the phi
losopher Hypatia, is familiar matter of history. And
though the exact degree of his complicity or respon
sibility will never be known and possibly has been ex
aggerated, enough Is known to indicate his spirit and
temper. A change for the worse had assuredly come
over the successors of Clement and Origen and of
Alexander and Athanasius. The spirit of tolerance
and charity, of moderation and sympathy, had been
succeeded by one of keen, fierce, vindictive and not
over-scrupulous orthodoxy.
The truth of history requires that this should be
said, and we cannot shut our eyes to the ample and
sad Illustrations of it In the events that are to follow.
But even In those events. In which the ordinary and
earthly eye detects only the play of the bitter and
bad passions of men, we can see If we look deeply
enough the logical and orderly working out of the
most divine and human issues and interests. Nesto
rius and Cyril, Antioch and Alexandria, now fairly
pitted against each other, may represent very much
of the merest jealousies and bitternesses of human
strife ; but it is nevertheless true that underneath all
this the two parties to the strife were each, with no
little faithfulness, conscientiousness and ability, rep
resenting a vital principle at that moment vitally at

opposite Points of View. 217
stake not only for themselves but for the whole world
and for all time. The question of the divine in Jesus
Christ personally, freely and fully realizing itself in
the human, and at the same time of the human freely
and fully and personaUy realizing itself In the divine.
Is no trifling one ; In it is focussed and brought to an
Issue the whole question of the divine-natural and the
divine-human constitution of the world and of man.
It Is true, as Irenaeus said, that Jesus Christ " in se
recapltulat longam dispositlonem homlnis," and not
only of man but of the whole creation.' To know him
is to know them, for It Is to see them In God and God
in them. Alexandria had developed the truth of God
In man. Antioch had undertaken and was ready now
to submit and defend its attempt to develop the truth
of man in God. Each charged the other with its error
and failed to see its truth. It was charged against
one side that It taught indeed the self-fulfilment and
revelation of God in man, but at the expense of the
humanity which was reduced to a mere visiblUty or
at most to a mere Instrument or organ of the divine.
Everything distinctively human, human knowledge,
human wIU, human freedom and character and activ
ity, human personality, were absorbed and lost in the
divine. If there was a fulfilment of God in man In
all this, there was certainly no fulfilment of man In
God, but only a complete supplanting and obHteratlon
of him.
Against the other on the contrary it was charged
that Its preservation of the human was through denial
of any real being In it of the divine. The so-caUed
Incarnation was not God in man at all, but only God

2i8 The Ecumetiical Councils.
with man; It was an external personal relation and
not an internal personal identity, a avvd(peia and not
an evuaig. In principle the Logos was no more Christ
or Christ the Logos than other men; he was only
more closely associated with him through the superior
faith and piety of that particular man. The Incarna
tion was thus nullified to save the humanity from
being absorbed and lost In the divinity. The Logos
and Christ were not really one but continued two ;
and no sanctification of a man however complete can
make him an object of our adoration and worship or
constitute him all men's redemption and salvation.
At most he can be to us an illustration and example
of human salvation.
Matters had got to the point where each side could
see the deficiency or the error of the other, but not
to that at which the truth of both sides could be
successfully embraced In a common statement. It Is
possible to hold as the church did that God Is com
plete in man and man is complete in God in the one
person of Jesus Christ, without at aU realizing the
difficulty of practically carrying out into detail that
double truth In its integrity on both sides. It is
very certain that there was a real, and a very im
portant and difficult issue raised between Cyril and
Nestorius. And it was only an accident that It was
raised by them in particular; it would have come in
evitably without them at about the same time and In
about the same way.
There were, as always, agents from Alexandria in
Constantinople, and no sooner had Nestorius thrown
down the gauntlet than Cyril was prepared to take it

St. Cyril of A lexandria. 2 1 9

up. In fact even before the dispute arose Cyril had
already, like Athanasius, produced his Initial treatise
upon its subject-matter. He did not assume any
new position through antagonism to his opponent.
His position was the logical Alexandrian one. He
was the honest and veritable successor, and inteUec-
tuaUy and theologically no unworthy one, to the great
Athanasius. Indeed his uncle Theophilus, although
less honest and of worse temper, was no mean theo
logian and had Inherited and transmitted the ortho
doxy of the school. And in the discussions to ensue
Cyril frequently manifests at least a doctrinal and
theological if not personal appreciation of the genu
inely rehgious interests Involved, not less true than
that of Athanasius himself. He dwells even less upon
the mere revealing and teaching and more upon the
actually regenerating and redeeming function of the
incarnation, and in a way to show that he had fully
felt its necessity in thought at least if not in personal
experience. But why not in both ? Men are generally
as much better as they are worse than they appear;
the heights and the depths meet in us all. And it
would seem that in that age wider extremes of good
and bad could coexist in one man ; men could be both
better and worse, both higher and lower, than It is
possible to be at one and the same time now.
Cyril began by making the issue that Nestorius had
raised the subject of his annual paschal pastoral In the
spring of 329, but without personal allusion to Nes
torius himself. Especial excitement had been aroused
among the monks by the attack upon the Theotocos,
and Cyril In allaying this proceeded further in an elab-

220 The Ecumenical Councils.
orate circular letter to give the cathoUc use of the
title as indicating not, as Nestorius had charged, that
the Virgin was mother of the Godhead In a heathen
sense, but only of the humanity in our Lord. " But,"
he continued, " since it was not a man who was born
of her but God the Word in human form or nature,
therefore he whose mother she was was God and she
was mother of God." In the more and more heated
correspondence that ensued Cyril certainly at first
strives to keep the discussion free from personal com
plications and subordinate to the Interests of the truth.
His analysis of the position of Nestorius is acute and
masterly and evinces nothing more than a rehgious
as well as scientific regard for the theology and the
Christianity of the church. If he had had a Theodore
instead of only a Nestorius to deal with, and if it had
been possible (at any time, but especially In that con
tentious age) for the two parties to think out sym
pathetically, from their opposite points of view, the
common truth of which they were both In search,
much good might have been gained and much evil
averted. But Christians are as human as Christianity
Is divine, and even human passions are among the
means to divine ends.
News of the excitement created by Nestorius in
due time reached Rome, and he himself in a letter
to the Bishop Celestine incidentaUy aUudes to the
measures he had felt called upon to take with refer
ence to the heathen representation of the Virgin as
mother of God; and asks his judgment of the matter.
Celestine kept the subject a long time under advise
ment upon the excuse of having to get it properly

Attitude of the Roman Bishop. 221
translated and considered; and meantime he was In
correspondence with Cyril with whose views he finally
and entirely concurred. It was due In great measure
to the Roman mind and character and to the pecu
liar qualities and limitations of the Latin tongue, and
not only to any especial wisdom or prudence of the
Roman bishops, that their relation to all the questions
of speculative doctrine which agitated the church was
not a controversial but a judicial one. They never
contributed to results but only weighed and passed
judgment upon them. It was very naturally their
policy to be silent in discussion and to balance con
clusions. Lacking the more subtle and philosophical
qualities of mind, they left the analysis and definition
of principles to the Greek inteUect and language which
seemed to be specially constituted for It, and played
the part of the common sense which tests and passes
judgment upon the decisions of the reason. Undis
turbed by the sophistries which mingle with and con
fuse theoretical disputes and by the personalities and
partisanship engendered by heated controversy, they
were better qualified to represent the universal prac
tical reUgious Instincts and experiences, and In the
light of these to be dispassionate and impartial judges
of discussions which they could not always follow and
of results which they could never have attained.
Celestine when he was ready summoned a synod
In Rome, which from the standpoint of Cyril con
demned Nestorius. He then wrote to Cyril to add
his authority to his own, and that they should con
jointly proceed to the excommunication of Nestorius
and the provision of a successor for Constantinople,

2 22 The Ecumenical Councils.
unless he should repent of his heresy within ten days
of his receipt of their action. Cyril on his part, on
receipt of this communication from Rome, gathered
a council of Egyptian bishops and at the beginning
of November 430 addressed to Nestorius a fuller
letter, the points of which were summed up in twelve
anathematisms in which he called upon Nestorius to
unite, directed against the specific errors with which
he was charged : " That Immanuel Is not really God
and the Virgin not Theotocos; that the Logos was
not personally joined to the flesh; that there was a
connection of two persons {avvd(pEia) ; that Christ Is a
God-bearing man (Oebcpopog) ; that he was a separate in
dividual acted on by the Word and called God along
with him ; that his flesh was not the Word's own ;
that the Word did not suffer death in the flesh ;" etc.
In reply Nestorius issued twelve counter-anathe
mas. And Cyril having opened the way with a lack
of care and caution that afterward he found very
hard to explain, to an attack on his own views, John
of Antioch, Theodoret and others of the Eastern
bishops now also entered into the controversy with
charges against him of Apollinarianism.
But before all this, and in fact before Cyril's mes
sengers had reached Constantinople with the twelve
anathemas, the Emperor Theodosius II. had placed
a temporary quietus upon the whole controversy by
issuing a summons for a general councU to be held
after Easter of the following year, 43 1, pending which
all proceedings were ordered to be suspended.

CHAPTER XI.
THE COUNCIL OF EPHESUS.
jJYRIL had of course the Immense advan
tage over Nestorius that the matter of con
troversy was the heresy of the latter, and
not any possible deficiencies In his own
faith. But beside this he was very much
more than a match for him, not only In his transcen
dent ability as a controversialist and his irresistible
personal energy but in the political arts which the
character of the times rendered an essential element
of success. The one advantage that Nestorius pos
sessed In the favor of the emperor, who was on his
side and was personally prejudiced against Cyril, was
only a source of weakness to him ; inasmuch as it led
him through undue reliance upon It to neglect the
necessary exertions and precautions for securing to
himself a fair and favorable hearing. Nothing was
done on his part, while nothing was neglected on the
other. The council met in Ephesus in June A.D. 431, and
was at once taken possession of by CyrU and the local
bishop Memnon, who packed it with their suffragans.
The sentiment of the city was unanimous against
Nestorius who, realizing the hopelessness of impartial
323

2 24 The Ecumenical Councils.
treatment and dreading violence to his person, ab
sented himself altogether
In Constantinople Itself Cyril was no less actively
at work. The monks of the city were aroused
and set to Influence and terrify the weak mind of
the emperor. Before the council closed Alexandria
had almost impoverished itself In costly presents
and bribes to influential members of the court and
the Imperial household. And in course of time no
labor or expense was spared to excite or foster
dissensions among the favorers of Nestorius. By
October the whole thing was over; Nestorius had
been deposed and banished ; Maximian had been
consecrated In his stead, and Cyril was plying the
latter with suggestions and advice how best to com
plete and establish his victory.
We are however mainly concerned not with the
politics but with the progress of the doctrinal Interests
Involved, and to this we direct our attention. On one
side of the question at Issue Cyril, although not alone,
was almost as overshadowing and supreme as Atha
nasius had been In the conflict with Arianism. On
the other side matters stood about as follows : Be
tween the emperor's call in November and the con
vening of the council In June the patriarchate of
Antioch had been awaking to the Issue unexpect
edly raised between It and Alexandria by Nestorius's
action in Constantinople.
The temper there at the time was moderate and con
servative. The speculative error of Theodore which
had not In him led to practical heresy — for there
is much room for logical Inconsequence between

Conservative Temper of A ntioch. 225
speculative and practical opinion and thought — had
been much softened down and was In a fair way to
disappear gradually in the minds of his successors at
home, not one of whom can now be convicted of
heresy. If Antioch and Alexandria could have been
kept from the bitterness and blindness of controversy,
they might soon have coalesced in the common faith,
with no other difference than that of wholesomely
and helpfully occupying opposite and complementary
points of view, each professing also to hold the truth
of the other.
John of Antioch was at the time patriarch; and
Theodoret, a native of Anrioch but at this time
bishop of Cyrrhus near the Euphrates, was the rep
resentative, not Inferior to any of his predecessors, of
the scholarship and learning of the school of Anrioch.
In personal character and ability, in sanctity and de
votion. In eloquence and culture, Theodoret combined
without diminution the qualities and gifts of Chrysos
tom with those of Theodore. And he was quite as
free as the former from the doctrinal expressions and
positions which laid the latter open to the charge of
heresy. Indeed the sequel proved that John and
Theodoret and most of the school of Antioch, but for
the comphcations that foUowed, were already prepared
to meet the opposite side more than half-way upon
the ground of the common truth. On the other hand
It might be repeated, once for all, with reference to
aU such reflections upon how things might otherwise
have happened, that the truth or right never does
get settied peaceably or otherwise than by the
sword of human strife and passion. And the discus-

2 26 The Ecumenical Councils.
sions and disputes of this as of the preceding century
were none too much, if they were even yet enough,
to develop and reconcUe the Issues lurking at the root
of the church's doctrine.
It happened that Theodoret and a number of other
bishops were assembled In Antioch, probably for the
consecration of one of their number, when in the fall
or winter before the council the summons reached the
patriarch from Rome and Alexandria to join in the
excommunication and deposition of Nestorius of
Constantinople, unless he should at once recant his
errors. It produced great excitement and indignation,
because it was not believed in the East that Nesto
rius's objection to the title " Theotocos " proceeded to
the extent of unsoundness in the faith. While more
intemperate In other respects Nestorius had not gone
— and probably never did go — so far as Theodore
had in the implication of a double personality in our
Lord; and was not Theodore stiU the venerated
master of the East, whose name had not been sullied
with any charge of heresy ?
But notwithstanding aU this, a letter was immedi
ately prepared and sent to Nestorius Imploring him
to yield, and not involve the whole church in discord
upon a point about which there was no substantial dis
agreement. The title "Theotocos" had been conse
crated by orthodox usage. Theodore had wisely and
moderately forborne from objection to it, and it was
susceptible of a sense which was true and acceptable
to all. This letter Is so admirable in form as well as
spirit that It has been usuaUy ascribed to the pen of
Theodoret, although it was sent In the name of John.

Division in the Council. 227
But Nestorius was fixed in his determination to
abide by the Issue. With his reply he sent the
Twelve Articles or anathematisms of Cyril, which had
been received In the meantime. Now unfortunately,
as has been said, these articles were at the least un
guarded in expression and conveyed to the mind of
the Antiochians, sensitive on the other side, a distinct
Impression of ApoUinarian error. That Is to say,
Cyril used language which we shall consider later,
which meant to them if not in Itself a oneness of na
ture as well as a unity of personality In the incarnate
Lord and so a denial of any real manhood In him.
Several answers to Cyril were at once prepared and
circulated, one of them by Theodoret, and all based
upon not only insufficient but false views of his opin
ions. Thus all Antioch was Involved In the quarrel
of Nestorius and preparations were made for an Ir
repressible conflict at the forthcoming council over
irreconcilable differences.
As soon as Easter and Its octave were over, John
assembled at Antioch his suffragans and prepared for
his departure to Ephesus. He was delayed by a
famine and troubles in the city and by bad weather
and accidents on the way. It was a six weeks' jour
ney at the best, and messengers sent ahead found
Cyril provoked by the delay and Impatient to begin.
John regretted and explained his slowness, but hoped
to embrace his brother within one week more and be
ready for business. Besides this formal message he
had privately instructed several of those who had gone
ahead to say that if he should be stUl further delayed
they should proceed without him. Cyril Impatiently

228 The Ecumenical Councils.
seized upon this as a pretext and forthwith convened
the council. And when John and the Syrian bishops
arrived on June 27th, within the time specified In
their message, they found that the council had been
In session for some days and its work practicaUy
accomplished;' Nestorius was deposed and excom
municated. The forty-odd Antiochians were pro
voked by the discourtesy shown and the advantage
taken of them Into a course which for intemperance
and violence unfortunately out-CyriUed Cyril and
placed an impassable chasm between the two parties.
Refusing on their arrival to accept any attentions or
explanations or to see any of the opposite faction,
they proceeded before even removing the dust of
their journey to hold a conference in their inn, in
which they deposed and excommunicated Cyril and
Memnon and anathematized their supposed opinions.
And so the great gathering of bishops was instantly
and hopelessly split into two hostile and irreconcilable
councils, each anathematizing the other for opposite
heresies of which probably none present were really
guilty. The representatives of the bishop of Rome
arrived later and at once added the authority of Rome
to that of Alexandria in condemnation of Nestorius.
For some time longer both sides were eagerly press
ing their claims upon Theodosius II. and awaiting his
decision. At length after much vacillation the emperor
incUned to the side of Cyril but refused to confirm
any penalties against the Oriental bishops. So the
councU broke up and the bishops returned to their
homes with no new doctrinal decisions and the net
result of the personal condemnation of Nestorius.

Movement toward Reconciliation. 229
No sooner however were the parties to It dispersed
than the quarrel began to assume a less serious and
violent character. The change was no doubt largely
due to the desire and determination of the emperor
to effect a reconciliation and to the consciousness on
the part of the Eastern bishops that the weight of the
church was against them. The emperor was espe
cially anxious to effect a better understanding between
John and Cyril, and this was facilitated by the fact
that each of these was feeling the need of exculpating
himself from what he thought to be false and unjust
impressions as to his position. Cyril had been busy
even at Ephesus, while the case of the two parties
was in suspense before the emperor, writing a defense
of his misunderstood Twelve Articles. He subse
quently wrote to Maximian a disclaimer of the views
imputed to him and was now preparing a vindication
of himself to be submitted to the emperor. John of
Antioch and his party on their way home, while still
under the fresh sense of their wrongs, had halted at
Tarsus to hold a new council, In which the deposition
of Cyril was confirmed and the members pledged
themselves never to consent to that of Nestorius.
Soon after another was held at Antioch which was
much more largely attended. At this the Twelve
Articles of Cyril were condemned, the Nicene Creed
was declared to be a sufficient confession of faith,
Athanaslus's exposition of it in his epistle to Epic
tetus was adopted as the expression of orthodoxy, and
finally — Indicating the beginning of the change to
ward better feelings — Six Articles were drawn up as a
basis of possible reunion.

230 The Ecumenical Councils.
The emperor had been unsuccessful In his first
efforts to bring John and Cyril together In a private
interview, but on receipt of the Six Articles of An
tioch, which had been sent to him by the aged and
venerated Acacius of Bercea, Cyril wrote to John a
letter that opened the way to further and closer
approaches. Cyril Implied that his own Twelve
Articles, which he had been at so much pains to ex
plain, would not be allowed to stand In the way of
a reconciliation, disavowed and condemned the here
sies attributed to him, and Insisted upon nothing
but concurrence In the condemnation of Nestorius.
Through the good offices of Acacius, who seemed
to have singularly combined the respect and affection
of aU parties, John admitted that the letter of Cyril
certainly cleared him of any charge of heresy, and
sent to Alexandria one of his bishops, Paul of Emesa,
to confer further upon the differences between the
patriarchs and the terms of reconcUiation. There
were still obstacles in the way, but Paul acted with
prudence and tact, explained and smoothed away
difficulties, pleased both bishop and people by one
or more sermons preached at Chrlstmastide, in which
he took occasion to express his views of the incarna
tion, and returned to Antioch with terms of commu
nion upon John's signature of which Alexandria and
Antioch should be one again.
After some delay and a little Imperial pressure John
accepted the terms, and In the spring of 433 sent to
Cyril the formulary of reunion with his signature.
He concurred, in spite of the pledge at Tarsus, In the
sentence of Nestorius and the condemnation of Nes-

Obstacles to Reconciliation. 231
torlanlsm. CyrU repUed In a letter beginning, " Let
the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad!"
The Oriental party however did not all foUow their
head. Most of them could have joined in the con
demnation of Nestorianism but not in the sentence
of Nestorius, because they did not hold him guilty
of it. And besides that they had solemnly agreed at
the Council of Tarsus not to abandon a man In whose
substantial orthodoxy they beHeved and at whose
unjust treatment they were Indignant. Nestorius was
now In a monastery near Antioch with which In earlier
life he had been connected and where he was kindly
received and treated on his return by the bishop and
the whole church of Antioch. But at no stage of his
career had he shown a very attractive spirit, and
perhaps his persistent obstinacy and Intractableness
at this juncture, as well as the satisfactory explana
tions and the conciliatory temper of Cyril after the
council, had wrought the change In John's mind. To
these causes however must be added the good man
agement and judicious pressure of the imperial officers,
the wisdom and tact of such episcopal advisers and
helpers as Acacius and Paul of Emesa, the moderation
of Celestine of Rome and his successor, and John's
own prudent consciousness that he was on the losing
side. Besides those who acted thus with John, there were
two other secrions of the Antlochian party who took
a different stand. First there was a very large one
represented by Theodoret and those like him who
repudiating Nestorianism refused to condemn Nesto
rius. Theodoret had thrown himself prematurely and

232 The Ecumenical Councils.
bitterly Into the doctrinal controversy with Cyril and
had not personaUy shown himself in It at his best.
Upon Cyril's subsequent explanations, and In the
subject-matter of his negotiations with John, he had
frankly admitted that Cyril had cleared himself of
heresy. But Cyril's one condition of intercommunion
was the condemnation of Nestorius, and In the way
of this was not only the pledge to stand by him but
the continued faith in his Innocence. There being no
doctrinal ground of separation It was of course only
a question of time how soon this section would be
reconciled with the church. They seemed by degrees
to admit that there was something that the church
had need to condemn under the name of Nestorius,
whether he himself was formally and technicaUy guilty
of it or not. Theodoret himself joined In the con
demnation late In the sessions of the next general
council at Chalcedon. But the spirit of Irreconcilable
and undying hostility to " Egypt " was concentrated
in the person of the good and holy bishop of Hiera-
polis, Alexander, and a small section of men of the
same temper, who persisted, against the disIncHnation
of the authorities to resort to severity, in suffering
the loss of all things and preferring death In exile
and poverty to Intercommunion with the heretics of
Alexandria. So far for the external history of the downfall of
Nestorius. It is quite a different matter when we
come to ask ourselves what progress had been made
toward the solution of the doctrinal problem that
constituted the sole interest and value of the whole
dispute. The one point gained might be said to be

Net Result of the Council. 233
the final settlement of the question of the double
personality ; the language of Theodore and Nestorius
would never afterward have been possible within the
church. But that was in process of settling itself and
would not have survived long to trouble the peace of
the church. The idea of a Christ who is two persons,
the Son of God who becomes man only in the sense
of being morally reproduced In a human person as
his free image or likeness ; and a man who is the Son
of God only in the sense that he morally images and
reproduces him In himself. Is too untenable and Im
possible In Itself, and falls too far short of the church's
faith in a real incarnation, to have perpetuated Itself.
Cyril had truly stated the question at issue to be,
" Whether Jesus was a human Individual (no matter
how closely related to God), or whether he was the
divine Son himself appearing in human form. In the
former case the Son of Mary must be regarded simply
as a very highly favored saint; in the latter, as a
divine Redeemer." But there were practically none
now of the opposite party who would not freely con
cede as much. While then under the term " Nesto
rianism " the error to which the Antlochian doctrine
Inchned was condemned, and effectually condemned,
on the other hand was the truth from Antioch which
the church needed, and which was sought to be added
as the complement and completion of that from
Alexandria, in any fair way of securing recognition
and appreciarion? At that moment most assuredly
not. Cyril Is singularly clear and sound In detecting
the logical tendencies and dangers of the opposite
side, but of the possibihty of a contribution of truth

234 The Ecumenical Councils.
from that direction such as was to be recognized and
accepted in the Council of Chalcedon, he and his party
seem as yet to have caught no InkUng. It is true he
makes now a nominal concession to John in which
he seems to be giving up something and accepting
something, but he was not long in making it apparent
that he had no such meaning.
In accepting the Six Articles of Antioch as the
basis of the reunion Cyril gave his approval to a con
fession of faith which, though submitted to him now
simply as that of John, was In reality that drawn
up by Theodoret for presentation in the name of all
the bishops of the East to the Council of Ephesus.
In this formulary our Lord is defined as being " of
one essence (homoousion) with the Father as to God
head, of one essence with us as to manhood. For
there took place a union of two natures; wherefore
we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. Accord
ing to this idea of a union without confusion, we
confess the holy Virgin to be Theotocos, because God
the Son was incarnate and made man, and from his
very conception united to himself the temple assumed
from her." In this formula, it will be observed, there
is an explicit recognition of the two natures united
without confusion In the one person of the incarnate
Lord. It was just this distinct acknowledgment of
the two aspects, divine and human. In the Incar
nation that the Orientals had insisted upon, and
when Cyril thus admitted it their objection was re
moved and John and Theodoret both accepted it at
the time as satisfactory assurance of Cyril's orthodoxy
from their point of view. But it is very evident that

Doctrine of the " One Incarnate Nature." 235
Cyril did not mean it as they received It. Either the
concession was not made in good faith or else Cyril
was very far from conceiving or appreciating the
truth, and the importance of the truth, for which the
Orientals were contending. This will appear from all
his subsequent conduct.
As many of the Easterns thought that John had
yielded too easily and too much, so the followers of
Cyril felt that he had gone too far in the compromise
effected between them in his acceptance of the phrase
"two natures." In justifying himself he explains
what he means by It and proves very conclusively
that It is very far short of what the Orientals under
stood or would have been satisfied with or what the
Council of Chalcedon afterward taught. He points
out the natural distinction and necessary difference
between the nature of God and the nature of man,
which before the incarnation are manifestly two na
tures and are combined in the person of Jesus Christ.
But they are two only before the Incarnation ; In their
union In the Incarnate One they cease to be two and
become one. After that, the mind may still conceive
them as two but in fact and in operation they have
become one and are not to be distinguished in their
activity. If this Is so Is there any room or possibility for a
real human life of our Lord or Is It possible to say
that he was a man ? The contenrion of the Orientals
was not theorerical but practical; they demanded
that, after and in the union, the human nature,
the human Ufe and activity of the Lord should
have Its proper significance and value in the act and

236 The Ecumenical Councils.
fact of the divine-human atonement. If there was
but one nature in the Incarnate One, then either he
was no longer God but only man or no longer man
but only God or no longer either but only something
half-way between both. The cathohc truth is that
our Lord is, after and in the incarnation, both God
and man in the complete nature and activity or oper
ation of both, so that in his every act and quahty
and character we can say, and mean it, that he is
very man and also very God.
So, after and in spite of the contrary assurance in
terms and his acceptance of the two natures united
without confusion in the person of our Lord, Cyril
continued to hold as before what the Antiochians
really objected to In the doctrine of the " one nature."
It is not that he was guilty of bad faith so much as
that he never did see the other side sufficiently to
understand or appreciate the truth of Its claim. It is
true that it is common still to maintain that what he
means by the \).ih (pvavg, the one nature of the Incar
nate, is the single personality in the two natures ; and
every now and then Cyril succeeded in convincing
his opponents that that was his meaning, just as every
now and then detached sentences may persuade us
of the same thing ; but a careful weighing of his own
explanations, as of those of his modern apologists,
convinces us of the contrary. It would be unjust to
charge him with heresy, and in doing so we should
implicate even greater and much holier doctors than
he before him. But it is very certain that at Alex
andria one side, one half, the truth was not only
undeveloped, but In the mind of Cyril and stUl more

Alexandrian Christology Defective. 237

In the mind of his successor seemed incapable of
taking root. They were so satisfied with what they
had done that it seemed impossible for them to con
ceive that there might be something more to be done.
To them the two natures, distinct before, became
practically one after the union in Jesus Christ. The
one divine Person acted indeed in both, or under the
form of both, but It was a single and thus a divine
activity. It was God and not man who lived and
spoke and acted in Jesus. The human nature Is in
deed acknowledged as acting according to Its own
laws In certain lower functions, as in the bodily wants,
sufferings, etc. But these are not distinctly human,
they are animal; the human begins properly in the
consciousness and the will. And the humanity of
our Lord's consciousness and will Is to be found in
a freedom, a choice, a limitation and growth, a reahty
of weakness and temptation, of faith and obedience,
which are not possible in a system that denies the
continuance in the Incarnation of a true human nature
and human conditions.
Cyril simply does not advance a step beyond the
stage of Athanasius In this direction. As a whole and
Implicitly there is the opposite of any denial of the
very humanity of the Lord ; but in detail there Is no
full understanding and valuing of the part of the
human activity In the true end and result of the Incar
nation. The atonement is solely something which
God did, not also something which man did.
Of course so hoUow a compromise and reconciliation
could not be a very lasting one and this was not long
in becoming apparent. We saw how anxious the

238 The Ecumenical Councils.
emperor was for the reunion and how large a part
he had In effecting It. When It was accompUshed,
he undertook to enforce conformity to its terms, and
the pressure gently applied at first to John of Antioch
himself was by degrees and in the end much more
decidedly brought to bear upon those who, like Alex
ander of Hierapolis, utterly refused to be reconciled.
The agitation and resistance only served to give a
new Impulse to the circulation and study of the works
of Theodore, and produced the impression of a revi
val of the principles that had been only superficially
touched and were very far from being permanently
extinguished In the person of Nestorius. It so hap
pened that the good and charitable Proclus, the suc
cessor of Maximian at Constantinople, who had done
much to bring the opposite parties together by im
partially recognizing them all as In fuU communion
with himself, wrote to the Syrian church urging them,
on their part In the Interest of the reconciliation, to
disavow and condemn certain extracts which he had
collected as liable to prejudice their claim to ortho
doxy. These extracts were in fact drawn from the
works of Theodore but it was not so stated and no
mention was made of his name. Unfortunately the
messengers thought good to insert officiously the
name that the tact of the bishop had wisely omitted.
The condemnation of the extracts would consequently
as It now stood carry with it that of Theodore himself.
No doubt John and Theodoret and the great body of
the Oriental bishops were quite ready at the time to
disavow the objectionable language, but none were

Character of Cyril. 239
willing to begin at this late date to affix to the great
and venerated name of Theodore the stigma of a
heresy with which the church had not charged him
and of which however in terms he might have been
guilty they at least did not believe him in spirit or
life to have been so. And if he had been, no doubt
they would still have felt that in themselves, his dis
ciples and successors, it was suffering a gradual and
natural correction and oblivion, and that just the one
way to revive and renew It was to disturb the peace
ful and revered memory of Theodore.
Cyril himself was forced to recognize the weight
of the above reasoning and when it came to the point
counselled against any formal condemnation of the
person of Theodore. But he could not be blind to
the fact of the revival throughout the East of the
great reputation and Influence of Theodore, whose
works the Nestorlans were industriously circulating.
It looked as though the heresy, slain in the person
of Nestorius, were undergoing resurrection In the far
greater and more influential person of its real author.
Gladly would Cyril have extirpated In the root In
Theodore that which it now appeared had only been
lopped off In the branches in Nestorius. Unable to
reach his person or to stigmatize his memory, he de
voted his last years to the refutation of his works
and to this task aU his thoughts were directed when
In A.D. 444 he was cut off In the midst of his zeal
and labors for the truth.
The estimate both of the personal character and of
the doctrinal service to the church of Cyril of Alex-

240 The Ecumenical Councils.
andria will always be one of the problems of history.
With regard to the former, after all has been said of
his faults and limitations, and they were great, his
sincerity, his courage, his devotion to the truth as he
saw it will never suffer from that closer acquaintance
which is necessary to enable one to judge him fairly.
The subordination of the claims of concrete charity
to those of abstract orthodoxy seems singularly to
characterize the Greek Christianity of that age and
Cyril was a conspicuous instance of the type, but the
intolerance and violence of his youth seem to have
been at least modified by age and experience, and
we may hope that he ended with somewhat less of
the knowledge that puffeth up and somewhat more
of the love that buildeth up than he began with.
With regard to the latter point, the contribution of
Cyril to the doctrinal progress of the church. It was
great but also critical and negative. The net result
of the Council of Ephesus was the condemnation of
Nestorius and Nestorianism. He was successor to
Athanasius in that like him he was the master spirit
and pilot of one of the ecumenical councils of the
church, and he stood for the same truth ; but his
greatness and his service, in so far as they were an
actual factor in the history of dogma, were exhibited
in defence not in construction. Cyril added no new
element in the development of the doctrine of Christ ;
It Is a question rather how much he obstructed its
true progress.
While the Alexandrians were thus with difficulty
restraining their hands from the attack upon Theo
dore and the principles of the school of Antioch, the

Renewal of the Issue. 241
Antiochians on their part had ceased to attach any
value to the disclaimers and explanations of Cyril
with reference to his principle of the p.ia, ^voig, and
under the leadership of Theodoret were beginning to
organize the attack which, with many alternations of
fortune, was finally to result In victory for them in
turn, at the Council of Chalcedon.

CHAPTER XII.
EUTYCHIANISM AND THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON.
HE preparations on both sides for the
renewal of hostihties resulted In overt
action first on the part of th'e Orientals.
In 448 a local council was in session in
Constantinople under the presidency of
Flavian, who had succeeded Proclus as patriarch. In
the midst of this council, which had been called for
quite other purposes, Eusebius bishop of Dorylaeum,
without previous notice, preferred before Flavian
charges against a monk of his city of disseminating
false doctrine. This was the archimandrite Eutyches
who for many years had presided over a monastery
of three hundred monks, and during that time had
never once emerged from his cloisters. When he was
summoned to appear and answer the charges, It
was for a long time impossible to prevail upon him
either to present himself in person or to submit a
statement of his views. The determination and per
sistence however of his prosecutor Eusebius finally
compelled his presence and examination, and he was
pronounced guilty of heresy.
Eutyches was a fair representative of the extremest
and narrowest section of the following of Cyril upon
242

Character and Views of Eutyches, 243
the subject of the single nature. He taught that the
person of the Lord was of or out of two natures, but
not in two natures ; that Is, that the natures were two
and distinct prior to their union In the act of Incarna
tion, but that after that act they were one. So that
In the incarnate Son the human nature was no longer
the same as ours; even the body of Christ was by
union with deity made different from that of other
men. Of course there was In such a view no longer
any even pretence of room for the slightest really
human volition or action In our Lord. He was simply
God willing and acting through a human visible form
and outward appearance. Such extreme instances
naturally only threw Theodoret and his party back
into distrust of Cyril's own disavowal of denying the
real humanity. Nevertheless the council acted with
extreme moderation and caution ; the condemnation
of Eutyches was expressed in the very words of Cyril
in his letters to Nestorius and John of Anrioch.
The condemnation of Eutyches was quickly fol
lowed by a much more decisive and fatal movement
from the other side. In Constantinople Flavian had
had from the moment of his consecration a bitter
personal enemy In Chrysaphius, the infamous minister
of Theodosius II. ; and In him Eutyches now found
a friend who was ready for any measures by which
the tables might be turned against Flavian and in
favor of himself. Through him the Imperial Influence
could be reUed upon to undo the action of the council.
On the death of Cyril of Alexandria In 444, he was
In turn succeeded by his nephew DIoscoruS, who
seems to have combined in his person aU the bad

244 The Ecumenical Councils.
qualities of his great-uncle Theophilus and his uncle
Cyril, without the redeeming ones of the latter. At
once violent and dishonest, and possessed only of the
energy and persistence without any other quaUfication
necessary for the part, his ambition In life seems to
have been to play the role of the great bishops of
Alexandria who before him had guided and controlled
general councils and been the representatives of the
orthodoxy of the world. He at once took up the
task that CyrU had dropped, of extirpating Nesto
rianism in its root by anathematizing the memory of
Theodore and destroying the credit and influence of
Theodoret. He proceeded at once to the most violent
and unscrupulous attacks upon the latter, disregard
ing and ignoring the most temperate and convincing
demonstrations of his innocence of all the charges
,'brought against him. But it was Dioscorus's oppor
tunity ; he had the emperor at his back, and Nesto
rianism was to be crushed finally and forever In the
persons of its real representatives, dead and alive.
Theodoret could get no hearing even from Theodo
sius more than from Dioscorus, although his let
ters of vindication and explanation have been ac
cepted from all sides in the church as models of piety
and orthodoxy. He was deposed and confined in a
monastery, where he was dependent upon friends
for the bare sustenance which he would consent to
accept at their hands. But from this retreat his cor
respondence with the outside leaders of the church,
Leo, Flavian and others, no doubt accomplished all
that his personal activity could have.
The other line of Dioscorus's policy was to procure

The "Robber Synod." 245
the reversal of the condemnation of Eutyches and
therein the defeat and discomfiture of the opposite
party. With a view to this the emperor was easily
Induced through Chrysaphius to call a general council
to be organized and controlled to that specific end.
The council met In the summer of 449 at Ephesus,
and has become famous or Infamous under the des
ignation fixed upon It by Leo the Great of Rome,
of Latrocinium or the Robber Council. Dioscorus
was made president by the emperor and from his
throne with the cooperation of the Imperial officers
directed and controlled the proceedings with an abso
luteness and Irresponsibility that was unknown in
any previous council. The Council of Constantinople
that had tried Eutyches was brought Into question
and upon the pretence that its proceedings were to
be reviewed and judged by the decisions of the gen
eral councils of Nicasa and the first Ephesus the
bishops who had taken part in his condemnation, with
Flavian at their head, were put upon their trial.
Theodoret was specially excluded from the right to
sit in the council. The records of the action at Con
stantinople were publicly read, the charges against
Eutyches reviewed and all his answers accepted as
the sound doctrine of the church. Then Flavian and
Eusebius, who had been the prosecutor of Eutyches,
were condemned and deposed and the other bishops
who had united with them were by the violence of
Dioscorus and the support of the imperial officers
terrorized into signing their condemnation and the
acquittal of Eutyches ; and even this did not secure
some of them from subsequent deposition. Flavian,

246 The Ecumenical Councils.
who had almost alone had the strength and courage
to oppose the violence of Dioscorus, received at the
hands of the more brutal monks physical injuries
that soon after resulted in his death.
Thus was the temporary advantage of the Anti
ochians overwhelmingly reversed by the most crush
ing defeat. And yet perhaps nothing could have
happened better calculated to secure to them at
last the consideration of their side of the truth which
had hitherto been withheld by the church and in
all probability could never have been secured from
Alexandria, the traditional leader and representative
of catholic thought. Dioscorus had not only done
everything in his power to bring odium upon his own
cause but he had left nothing undone to alienate the
powerful allies who had hitherto made common cause
with Alexandria. The see of Athanasius and Cyril
had especially always carried with it the great weight
and authority of the sympathy and support of Rome.
The seat of St. Peter was now occupied by the great
est of its bishops up to that time, and its first great
theologian, Leo I. Leo had been carefully studying
the course of events that followed the condem
nation of Nestorius. Upon his condemnation at
Constantinople Eutyches had confidently appealed to
Leo and the bishops of the West, upon whose side
as associated with the cause of Cyril he naturally
supposed himself to be. Leo also corresponded at
the time with Flavian and letters passed between him
and Theodoret. His impression of Eutyches was that
of a weak and narrow man who had faUen into error
through Ignorance rather than wickedness.

Leds Letter to Flavian. 247
Dioscorus also no doubt counted at first upon the
support of Leo and the West — he seems to have
had no misgivings about being the true successor of
Cyril and representative of Alexandria. But his
ambition and violence blinded and drove him on to
neglect and disregard and at last even to defy and
excommunicate his great traditional ally.
Some time before the meeting of the Latrocinium
Leo embodied his judgment of the whole doctrinal
question at issue, with regard to the two aspects of
the person of Christ, In a letter to Flavian, " Epistola
dogmatica ad Flavlanum." This treatise, commonly
known as the " Tome of St. Leo," became one of the
most Influential as It is stIU one of the hiost celebrated
of the patristic writings. In it he undertakes, with
out condescending to controversy or discussion, to
lay down the faith of the church with regard to the
two natures in the one divine personality of our Lord.
The letter was hailed with great favor and applause
throughout the East, and Theodoret wrote to Leo
expressing his entire sympathy and accord with It.
Armed with this letter and with another addressed
immediately to the council, the legates of Leo pre
sented themselves before it and took their seats. But
the letters were never received or read and no notice
was taken of them in the proceedings. Dioscorus
was able to say afterward that he had more than once
proposed that the communications from Rome should
be laid before the council ; but they were not, and no
one doubted that if Dioscorus had been In earnest the
councU would have heard them. In the violence that
disgraced beyond all paraUel the closing scenes, only

248 The Ecumenical Councils.
one of the Roman legates could withstand the Intim
idation that carried everything before It sufficiently to
utter his " Contradicitur " to the proceedings. He was
more fortunate than Flavian in escaping with his life
to carry the disgraceful story to his master, whom
he was to succeed in the see of Rome as Pope Hilary.
The so-called general council broke up with Dios
corus in possession of the field and all the East at his
feet. No doubt he saw himself a third to Athanasius
and CyrU in the history of catholic dogma, and for
a brief while his ambition felt itself satisfied.
But Leo was now in the field, stirring every en
ergy to wipe out the shame of the Latrocinium by
substituting for it the action of a real general council
of the church. His grief and Indignation knew no
bounds but did not paralyze his efforts and deter
mination to repair the damage done to the faith and
honor of Christendom.
The position and character of Leo the Great during
the more than twenty years of his reign — from 440
to 461 — were singularly impressive and commanding.
It was given to him more than to any other man to
organize and consoUdate that spiritual empire in the
West which was to hold society together In the dis
integration and decay of the secular power, and to
transfer to the Christian church the authority and
ability that were lost to the Roman state to mould
and assimilate the barbarian hordes that were over
running the Western world. The credit was given to
him of personaUy overawing and turning back Attila
the Hun from the gates of Rome and of softening
if not wholly averting the excesses of Genseric the

The Synod Sustained by the Emperor. 249
Vandal. It was necessary for the function that the
church was to discharge In acting as a bond to society
and especially In receiving, subduing and civilizing
the Inflowing tides of barbarism that it should present
everywhere a united and compact front, and Leo
devoted much of his earlier energies to extending and
establishing the authority and control of the apostol
ical see over Gaul, Spain and the whole of the West.
In this he had the advantage of an absolute influ
ence not only over the Western Emperor Valentlnlan
III., but over his mother and wife, so that the im
perial heart and arm were with him in all his schemes
for the unification and organization of the spiritual
power of the church.
Yet while all-powerful and practically without re
sistance in the West, Leo was at this juncture pow
erless in the East. He had Indeed a noble and
powerful ally at court In the person of Pulcheria, the
remarkable sister of Theodosius II. , who had been the
friend of orthodoxy in the person of Cyril in the
General Council of Ephesus as she was to be so to
Leo In connection with the CouncU of Chalcedon.
But through the machinations of Chrysaphius Pul
cheria was powerless at this time and the weak em
peror was In the hands of Eutyches and Dioscorus.
Leo implored him to at least let matters stand as they
had been prior to the proceedings against Eutyches,
to give no authority to the disorderly Council at
Ephesus and to authorize the assembling of a reaUy
ecumenical council in Italy. But to his appeals and
those of the whole Imperial family of the West he
had no reply from the emperor but a defence of the

250 The Ecumenical Councils.
freedom, regularity and authority of the Latrocinium.
Meantime Dioscorus, who continued to have things
his own way, had excommunicated Leo. Anatolius,
supposed at first to be his adherent and instrument,
had succeeded Flavian at Constantinople. The rest
of the East was still intimidated by the action of the
Council of Ephesus and the determination of the
emperor to enforce Its decisions.
Suddenly in the summer of 450 the whole aspect
of matters was changed by the sudden death of Theo
dosius II. and the accession to the throne of the pious
and orthodox Pulcheria. To strengthen herself Pul
cheria married and associated with her in the em
pire the able General Marcian, and in both these Leo
and the catholic faith found old and tried friends.
Instantly the ecclesiastical atmosphere began to clear.
Anatoliusof Constantinople signed the famous Epistle
to Flavian which was the condition of communion with
Rome, and was ranged on the side of Leo. The
Eastern bishops who had been intimidated Into com
pliance with the decisions of Ephesus breathed again
and one by one explained and recanted, and every
thing bade fair to fall back of its own accord Into the
orthodox channel.
Marcian had been prompt to take up Leo's desire
for a really ecumenical council, but Leo himself now
under the changed aspect of matters began to hesitate,
especially since Marcian while anxious to concede
everything else to him seemed firmly and quietly to
disregard his request that the councU should depart
from precedent and go to the West. But matters
had gone too far; the council was called, first for

Council of Chalcedon. 251
Nicasa but subsequently for Chalcedon; and Leo,
only stipulating that dogmatic questions should not
be stirred anew and treated as doubtful or unsettled,
prepared to take the leading part in it.
The time and conditions all happily conspired
to favor the views and designs of Leo, which were
not wholly restricted, as we shall see in the end,
to a dogmatic interest in the church's faith. The
imperial courts East and West were wholly with him.
Dioscorus was involved in the ruin that the cause
of Eutyches had brought upon itself by the proceed
ings of Ephesus. In all the church there was not a
single commanding personality to stand by his side
and share with him the influence and honors that
were to be all his own. The council though sum
moned by the emperor was assembled by his au-
thorlt)^ — " te auctore, " Marcian had written to him —
and was to be presided over by his legates.
The CouncU of Chalcedon met early In October
and was composed from first to last of over six
hundred bishops. Dioscorus having entered and
taken his seat was made to leave it and take his place
among those under accusation. When Theodoret
and those deposed at Ephesus entered as members,
there was a loud outcry from the opposite side against
their reception, but they were admitted as accusers.
The councU began its proceedings by ratifying the
decisions of the preceding ecumenical ones, Nicsea,
Constantinople, and Ephesus, with apparentiy for the
first time some discussion of the verbal differences
Introduced into the Nicene Symbol upon no recorded
authority, to which allusion has already been made.

252 The Ecumenical Councils.
Charges were brought by Eusebius of Dorylaeum,
the original accuser of Eutyches, against Dioscorus
for his treatment of Flavian and himself at the Latro
cinium. Both Dioscorus and Eutyches were con
demned and excommunicated.
Leo had stipulated that the council should make
no new definition of the faith, assuming that it was
already determined and sufficiently stated In his
Tome, which was now generally accepted. But
Marcian was resolved that the two parties should not
separate without putting their own hands to a formula
of concord which should compose their differences
and insure peace. Without dwelling upon the suc
cessive steps by which this end was secured, we may
now pass to a consideration of the general dogmatic
results of the great Council of Chalcedon, which have
controlled the faith of the catholic church from that
time to this, with only a few supplementary and
explanatory additions by the later general councils
of Constantinople.
In the first place the catholic creed, as has been
said, was recited and accepted separately in both its
forms, that of Nicaea and that of Constantinople, and
the Council of Ephesus was recognized as ecumenical.
" On the doctrine of the Trinity," It was declared,
" those creeds required no further explanation nor
was any other faith to be taught or creed proposed
for acceptance to converts from what heresy soever,
under pain of deposition in the case of the clergy and
excommunication In that of the laity." On the
mystery of the Incarnation the synodical letters of
Cyril to Nestorius and the Easterns and the Epistle

The Chalcedonian Decrees. 253
of Leo to Flavian were received as correct expositions
of the truth, the former as against the heresy of Nes
torius, the latter against the opposite one of Eutyches.
So far only the council was disposed to go, but
Marcian required that it should make a definition of
Its own upon the point immediately at issue. After
much vacUlation from side to side and much firm
Insistence and even suggestion on the part of the
emperor, the famous symbol of Chalcedon was passed
and all the above-stated action appended to It as
constituting together the Chalcedonian Decrees. On
October 25, 451, the action was subscribed by the
whole council, the Roman legates alone attesting that
they subscribed but did not define. Marcian and
Pulcheria attended In state the closing scene and the
emperor modestly and appropriately addressed the
parting bishops In much the same spirit and with
quite the impressiveness of Constantine at Nicsea.
With regard to the doctrinal formularies Included
In the decrees. It Is of course unnecessary to say any
thing further of the creed or creeds. We may pass
by also, as already considered, the letters of Cyril
exposing the fallacies and errors of Nestorianism. It
Is only as against a specific heresy that the mind of
Cyril stands forever as the exponent of that of the
church. Against the limitations and deficiencies of
his own views on the opposite side all the remaining
action of Chalcedon stands equally as a corrective if
not a protest.
With regard to the Epistie to Flavian It Is necessary
to say something more in connecrion with the subject
of Eutychianism which Is still before us. The Tome

254 The Ecumenical Councils.
of Leo in connection with the symbol of the councU
effectuaUy accomplished its immediate end, and the
council in taking a positive step parallel and sup
plementary if not quite equal In magnitude and Im
portance to that of Nicaea fully entitled Itself to be
received as ecumenical. It fixed once for all the
second of the two constituent elements that were to
enter into the church's doctrine of the person of
Christ. For the first time, alongside of the Athana
sian statement of the real divinity of the Incarnate
Lord was posited something like a corresponding and
adequate statement of the reaUty and actuality of his
humanity. The two natures were affirmed to be not
only in themselves and before the union but In their
union in the one Christ each complete In all the fac
ulties and functions proper to it, so that our Lord Is
In his human life and activity as complete and perfect
man as he Is also true and perfect God. " Leo says
clearly and this constitutes his merit that the funda
mental truth of Christianity is sacrificed quite as much
by a curtaUment of the humanity as by a curtailment
of the divinity of Christ " (Dorner). " God so became
man that each nature and substance preserved its
distinctive characteristics while both were conjoined
in one person." The true God was born In the entire
nature of a true man ; he was totus in suis, totus in
nostris. As the divinity was in no wise diminished
or changed by Incarnation In humanity, so the hu
manity in no sense ceased to be Itself or to act accord
ing to its own constitution and laws by assumption
into the deity.
Substantially identical In position with Leo's trea-

The Chalcedonian Symbol. 255
tise is the symbol of the council Itself which we will
now give In full :
" Following the example of the holy fathers, we
teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord
Jesus Christ, the same perfect in deity and the same
perfect In humanity, very God and very man, consist
ing of reasonable soul and flesh, of the same substance
with the Father as touching his Godhead, of the same
substance with us as touching his humanity; In all
things like to us, without sin ; begotten of the Father
as touching his Godhead before the aeons ; begotten
In the latter day for our redemption of the Virgin
Mary, the mother of God, as touching his humanity ;
one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten,
in two natures acknowledged unmixed, unchanged,
undivided ; so that the distinction of nature was never
aboUshed by the union but rather the pecuUarity of
each preserved and combined Into one person and
one hypostasis; not one, severed and divided into
two persons, but one and the same Son and only-
begotten, him who Is God, Logos and the Lord Jesus
Christ. And inasmuch as the holy synod has for-
mularized these things in all aspects with all accuracy
and care. It decrees that it be not allowed to propound
any other faith either In wrirings or In thought or
to teach It to others. Whosoever dareth to act In
opposition to this decree shall be deposed If of the
clergy, shall be excommunicated If of the laity."
The general result of the Council of Chalcedon has
been summed up substantially as follows : It Is con
ceded to be not improbable that personally both
Nestorius and Eutyches were treated unjustiy by the

256 The Ecumenical Councils.
Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. They suffered
not so much for principles distinctly held or avowed
by them as for consequences deduced by others
from their teaching. " But although the synod may
have been unjust In condemning the men. It was not
wrong in deciding that the two theories of Nestori
anism and Eutychianism, to which henceforth a dog
matical instead of a merely historical significance
attached, should be anticipatorlly laid down as buoys,
pointing out to the church the middle course along
which its voyage must proceed. The symbol of
Chalcedon may be characterized as a declaration on
the part of the church that no doctrine of the person
of Christ can lay claim to the name of Christian which
puts a double Christ in the place of the incarnate Son
of God or which teaches either a mere conversion of
God into a man or, vice versa, of a man Into God "
(Dorner). Thus once more was the church brought to con
demn both of the opposite tendencies to which the
course of Its thought was always subject. In putting
Its foot at once upon Nestorianism and Eutychian
ism it was crushing again on the one hand the Ebion
itic tendency that under its attack upon the term
" Theotocos " only veiled a denial of the real deity of
the Son of Mary, and on the other hand the Doceric
tendency that in its assertion of the one only incar
nate nature of our Lord taught the virtual absorption
and loss of his humanity.
Nevertheless the immediate — and perhaps we ought
also to say, the permanent — effect of the Council of
Chalcedon was and remains a disappointment. The

Criticism of the Tome. 257
church had accomplished In it more than she either
knew or Intended, and It remained for far-off future
ages that have scarcely yet arrived to take the
Council of Chalcedon at Its word and honestly con
strue the person of our Lord in the totality of his
manhood as well as his Godhead. It Is one of the
not infrequent instances In which the collective voice
of the church has seemed far In advance of the indi
vidual minds that have given it utterance. Of this
there is no better lUustration than in the case of
Leo himself, the master mind and controUing spirit,
though not personally present at the Council of
Chalcedon. We have not underrated the greatness of either the
mind or the services to Christianity and civilization
of Leo, as a far-seeing statesman and an able and
powerful organizer and administrator. But if Leo's
was a great practical it was not an equally great
speculative, phUosophical or theological genius. His
mind, character and pohcy were the highest reach
and illustration of that type which we have already
briefly described as distinctively Western and Roman.
Incapable by mental constitution of contributing to
the scientific formation and development of doctrine,
averse by policy to taking part In It, his genius lay in
the line of the pracrical wisdom and common sense
whose function in the church was to pass judgment
upon the results of thought and Impart to them the
authority and weight of catholic authority. The merit
and value of his Tome arose from the fact that while
the parries engaged in the problem of thinking out
and stating the opposite aspects of the person of

258 The Ecumenical Councils,
Christ were unavoidably Uable to the double danger,
each, of Ignoring both Its own error and Its antago
nist's truth, Leo was In the position of an equally
interested and personally unoccupied spectator who
could see the drift and danger of both. The bril
liancy, power and apparent originality of the Tome
are mainly not in the thought but in the statement
and In the Incomparable tone of authority in which
the culture of ages almost attains perfection. He
excludes the error on both sides, he affirms the truth
on both. But he did neither of these in such a way
that both sides could see It, and therefore he did it
to the permanent satisfaction of neither side.
Why did not the solution of Chalcedon satisfy?
Leo saw that the tendency of Nestorius was to a
higher Ebionism and he accepted and reaffirmed the
sentence of Ephesus upon him and It ; he saw that the
end of Eutychianism was a subtle but patent Doce
tism and he procured a final sentence upon it at
Chalcedon. Thus the real deity and the real hu
manity, the presence together in the one person of
the Lord of two natures, the divine and human, dis
tinct, unconverted and unconfused, yet Indivisible
and Inseparable, were affirmed as plainly and posi
tively as words could express them. One might ask.
What more was needed or possible ? The answer is
that the mere affirmation, no matter on what author
ity, of two opposite and apparently irreconcilable facts
Is not a real and therefore cannot be a satisfactory
solution of the problem of their coexistence. The
only solution is so to explain the facts as to show that
they are not Irreconcilable but rather mutually require

Its Insufficiency. 259
or postulate each other. The difficulty with Leo, as
with the mind of the church as yet. Is that he did not
himself so understand either the divine or the human
nature In our Lord as to present a satisfactory and
convincing picture of their unity. His unity of the
two natures in the one person was simply an affirma
tion. It was not so construed or explained as to
render It to the speculative or reflective mind any less
inconceivable or Impossible than it was before.
Leo however and aU the West with him were per
fectly satisfied that the Tome and the symbol had
done all that was necessary and that the question
was settled forever. Jesus Christ in his incarnation
is very God and very man, tottis in suis, totus in
nostris, complete in all that constitutes Godhead,
complete in all that constitutes manhood. But how
can this be so ? And how is It so ? The answer with
them was, practically : By the omnipotence of God,
and the authority of Leo's Tome and the symbol of
Chalcedon. That part of the mind of the church
which had created the symbols could not be satisfied
with such a closure of the question. Divine omnipo
tence and human authority combined cannot of them
selves constitute a dogma. That requires In addition
a 8oKa, a placet, from the universal spiritual under
standing and experience of spiritual and rarional men.
The fuU question actually before the church at the
time was not merely : Is Christ both God and man ?
That, In terms at least, aU held. But it was : How is
he both God and man; how shall we blend and
combine the two into one, and see and construe and
accept the unity ? It was 'only in the inability and

26o The Ecumenical Councils.
the effort to do this that one side fell Into an unreaUty
of the deity, and the other into an absorption and loss
of the humanity. Leo succeeded admirably in affirm
ing but not at aU in explaining the duality in the
unity and the unity in the duahty. And the Greek
world at least went on in its task of thinking out the
problem as though nothing had been said at Chal
cedon. It Is easy to show that in this Instance, as In many
others, without a proper conception of the dibri it Is
impossible to hold the oti. Leo himself, through dis
regard or misconception of how Christ. Is complete In
both natures, unconsciously does not hold the com
pleteness of both natures In him. Indeed It Is scarcely
an exaggeration to say that Leo could not reconcile
the unity with the duality for the reason that he held
neither a real duality nor a true unity. Let us test
this in detail.
First with regard to the two natures : Our Lord,
he says, is in his Incarnation totus in suis, totus in
nostris. That Is, he Is complete In all the attributes
of his deity, which are unchanged by his assumption
of humanity, and complete in all the characteristics,
the faculties, functions and activities of our humanity,
which Is not supplanted or swallowed up but only
quickened, heightened and realized by Its union
with deity. This Is what his words mean, and they
are true.
But when we come to ascertain what are the nostra
In which Leo sees our Lord's humanity complete,
what indeed are they ? He says, for example, very
truly and admirably — and this is what Is catholic in

Defects of Leo's Christology. 261
him — that " It Is the catholic faith that in Christ Jesus
there Is neither humanity without true divinity nor
divinity without true humanity. Neither of these
received without the other would avail for our salva
tion and It Is of equal peril to beUeve the Lord Jesus
Christ either God only without man or man only
without God." But he goes on to say that "the
denial of a true flesh is fatal." Why ? Only " because
it is a denial of the capacity for the bodily pains and
sufferings which our Lord endures for our salvation."
There is no really human significance given by Leo
to any activity or experience of our Lord higher than
those which are corporeal. The Son of God has
merely assumed a nature in which it may be possible
for deity to undergo experiences and sufferings of
which It Is incapable in its own nature. All the action
of our Lord in the flesh is only divine, it Is only his
passion which is human. On the contrary we say
that if Christ was totiis in nostris, then he was human
In aU the activities as well as the passivities of a ra
tional, free, moral and spiritual, and not only a cor
poreal, manhood. His highest act of faith in God,
his supremest attainment of self-sacrificing love and
obedience, his entire conquest of sin and victory over
death, were as truly human acts and activities — and
needed a thousandfold more for our salvation to be
truly human— as his merely bodily passion. It is ¦
characterisric of the position stUl occupied by Leo to
see the reality of our Lord's humanity in the facts of
his hunger, thirst and weariness, of his physical birth
and death, — that is to say In functions (hepyeiat)
which are not distinctively human at all but only

262 The Ecumenical Councils.
animal, which so far from being the whole of us
as men do not even belong to us distinctively as
men. In the second place, not only does Leo incompletely
apprehend the nostra or " ours " in which the church
through him affirms our Lord's human completeness,
but he Introduces into our Lord's personal conscious
ness and will and acts a duality, different Indeed from
that charged against Nestorianism but hardly less
objectionable in itself. The human Jesus thinks,
knows, wills and does this as God and that as man.
As man he Is hungry, as God he feeds the multitude ;
as God he says, " I and my Father are one ;" as man,
" My Father is greater than I ; " as man, " Where
have ye laid him? " as God, " Lazarus, come forth."
He thus humanly manifests, exhibits to our very
senses, a double consciousness, volition and action,
passing at will from one to the other aspect of what
cannot but appear to us as a twofold personahty.
The above Is sufficient to indicate the grounds of
the charge that Leo had not yet arrived at a satisfac
tory conception or appreciation either of our Lord's
completeness In each nature or of his unity In both.
But neither had he any conception of any lack In
his own views or in their expression; and the mis
fortune is that at this critical moment his supreme
personal and official weight of authority closed the
great living question pressing upon men's minds and
hearts for further solution, and not so much settled
it as fixed it as it stood, forever unsettled. In the
Western Church. For the contribution from Rome to
the supplementary work of the Sixth General Council

Political Schemes of Leo. 263
is only a reiteration of Leo's position, and further
than that Rome has not moved since.
The doctrinal results of the Council of Chalcedon
were sufficiently satisfactory to Leo, although he
would have preferred that it should not define but
simply accept his own formula of the faith ; but there
were other results that were far from satisfactory to
him. It was characteristic of Leo that throughout
his career he subordinated and consecrated his great
personal gifts and powers to the task of consolidating
and extending the paramount authority of the Roman
see. Beside that his far-seeing statesmanship fully
appreciated the practical importance and even neces
sity of this, the traditional theory of the divinely
derived supremacy of the chair of St. Peter had at
tained in his hands a relative if not yet Its most fully
developed completeness. And there Is no question
that apart from his dogmatic Interest in the faith of
the church he was actuated by the perhaps secondary
but certainly powerful motive and hope of turning
his doctrinal Influence and weight to good account In
the extension of his practical scheme. It was the first
opportunity the Roman see had had of extending its
prestige and authority in the East through any para
mount or even prominent part in a general council,
and everything conspired as we have seen to make
It a very great opportunity.
Leo had been anxious, in the interest both of the
doctrinal and the practical ends which he had in view,
that the council should meet at Rome or should not
meet at aU ; but this part of his request Marcian si
lently but firmly Ignored. The emperor was through-

264 The Ecumenical Councils.
out resolved to further the doctrinal purposes of Leo
but quietly to thwart and defeat his political scheme
of aggrandizing Rome, especiaUy at the expense of
Constantinople. The council itself too seemed to be
conscious of Leo's designs, and while it made many
and great admissions and concessions upon the surface.
Its general disposition and its final action were to set
Itself against them. It had been a matter of tradi
tional right and propriety that the ecumenical discus
sions and determinations of the catholic faith should
take place in the East, where they could be conducted
by Greek thought and in the Greek tongue ; and the
suggestion of a general council to be held In the West
was itself received as an Innovation. The threat by
which Marcian finally brought the bishops to agree
ment upon the symbol was that If the council adjourned
without agreeing It would be to meet again in Rome.
Indeed the council in itself was not only not in sym
pathy with what might be Leo's practical schemes
but if left to Itself its doctrinal conclusions would
have been both conceived and expressed in far greater
independence of him. Nothing but the most pointed
intervention of the emperor brought either the mean
ing or the form of the decrees sufficiently near to his
mind to avert on the part of the Roman legates the
withholding of their signatures and their withdrawal
from the synod.
We see thus three elements finally combined in the
decisions of Chalcedon, Leo, Marcian and the body
of the council itself, no two of which were wholly at
one. The emperor alone perhaps was successful and
satisfied In all points with the result. He secured

Primacy of Rome. 265
his formula of concord ; he kept the council in dog
matic accord with the mind of Leo ; and at the same
time he had, as we shall see, advanced the ecclesias
tical claims of the imperial see of Constantinople and
thwarted the aggressive ambition of that of Rome.
With regard to the council we shall see Immediately
and abundantly that the decrees of Chalcedon were
rather the beginning than the end of controversy with
regard to the main subject-matter of Its action.
As for Leo, while the dogmatic result of the coun
cil was on the whole a triumph for him, largely
through the emperor, his practical plans, at least not
without the emperor, sustained a distinct rebuff.
It will be remembered that the Second General
Council, held in Constantinople, had decreed that
the bishop of that city should have the primacy of
honor after Rome, on the ground that " It Is itself
New Rome. " This decree had long given great offence
and had not been acknowledged at Rome, because it
assumes that the primacy accorded to It rested upon
purely secular and poUtical grounds and not upon a
divine right. At Chalcedon It was thought necessary
for practical reasons and was desired that the juris
diction of Constantinople which had been growing up
under that decree should be reaffirmed and confirmed.
The emperor, the senators and the people of the Im
perial capital we're interested in pressing the measure,
and the council was not averse to reiterating Its own
version of the primacy which had from the first nat
urally attached to the political and secular centre and
capital of the world. With this view the twenty-
eighth canon was adopted, which provides as foUows :

266 The Ecumenical Councils.
"The fathers gave with reason the primacy to old
Rome because that was the royal city ; and with the
same object in view the one hundred and eighty pious
bishops gave equal primacy to the chair of New
Rome." This canon confirming the action of the one
hundred and eighty bishops at Constantinople was
enacted against the determined opposition of the
Roman legates and with fuU knowledge of the fact
that Leo and his predecessors had steadily refused to
acknowledge the action then ratified and confirmed.
The ground of offence is thus stated by Leo himself :
" Secular importance cannot confer ecclesiastical priv
ilege " ; " Alia est ratio rerum saecularium, alia divi-
narum." The Roman bishops based their claims upon
the divine prerogatives of St. Peter. The council as
yet continued to base them upon the " gift of the
fathers," and stated the reason of them to be that the
natural capital of the world ought to be the spiritual
capital of the church.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE MONOPHYSITES AND THE SECOND COUNCIL
OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
HE action of the Council of Chalcedon was
the first general recognition and triumph
of that side of the truth of Christ which
had been represented by Antioch. How
barren the victory was and was to remain
for many ages could scarcely be appreciated at the
time. In terms it was all or almost all that could
be desired. What more can be said than that our
Incarnate Lord is totus ifi nostris. If only the words
be allowed to mean all they say? And what less or
more do they say than that he was in aU points like
as we are, sin only excepted ? But unfortunately, as
we have seen, neither Leo nor the church fully meant
as yet aU the truth that In the providence of God they
were made to bear witness to. The gain was there,
but It was stored up and laid aside for future use.
The two facts, of the very Godhead and the very
manhood, of the completeness of the two natures In
the unity of a single personality, were destined to lie
side by side in the treasury of the church's thought
a long time before they should enter Into a reaUy
organic and vital union. Indeed have they done so
267

268 The Ecumenical Councils.
yet? What more can we claim than that we more
and more see that in themselves they do exist in such
a union and that more and more also we appreciate
the fact that the integrity of neither can be truly
maintained at the cost of that of the other? Against
the council's own symbol there Is nothing to be said.
Nor anything against that in the Tome of Leo which
was accepted by the councU as the statement of its
own doctrinal position. What we object to in Leo Is
not his facts but his philosophy. That he marked
out the channel for the church's future course and
as It were located the Scylla and Charybdis between
which it was necessary to steer Is a service of which
the credit can never be taken away from him. But
it remains that the hypostatical union as he under
stood it was still very far from being the true organic
unity of Godhead and manhood in the person of our
Lord. And there was this irreparable harm, that the
weight of his personal greatness In combination with
the now full-grown authority of the chair of St. Peter,
at least in the West, was sufficient almost to arrest
the further development of the truth of Christ. The
East will indeed continue for a few centuries longer
to think, but its conclusions will beat themselves In
vain against the rock of Roman fixedness and stability.
And the East Itself, without the balance and correc
tion of the now no longer plastic and responsive prac
tical good sense of the West, will think more wildly
and futilely ; until, with one final summation of Itself
in John of Damascus, its thought too will sink ex
hausted into a stereotyped orthodoxy incapable of
further change.

Revolt Against Decrees of Chalcedon. 269
For the present then the advocates of the Integrity
of the two natures In Christ were satisfied, and there
was no further complaint from the Antiochlan side.
It was only when considerably later the representa
tives of the actuality of our Lord's humanity under
took to develop and apply the Chalcedonian definition
In accordance with the truth of Its letter that It was
discovered that that was not intended and would not
be permitted. The trouble now was on the other or
Alexandrian side, with the many who could not see
that with the Chalcedonian assertion of the two
natures any satisfactory representation was given
them of the unity of our Lord's person. The result
of the experiment at Chalcedon, and especially of
Leo's own presentation, was rather to convince very
many that a distinction of the natures after the union
was Inconsistent with any real preservation of the
unity, and there arose a school of scientific Monoph
ysitism which was often more than a match in argu
ment for the truer Intuition but inferior science and
logic cf the church teachers. This new movement we
shall first briefly sketch historlcaUy and then endeavor
to characterize doctrinally.
The publication of the decrees of Chalcedon, as has
been said, was only the signal for a new outbreak of
Monophysirism throughout the East. To the great
body of monks especially It came with the meanmg
and force of a compulsory universal establishment of
Nestorianism. Everywhere the most determined
opposition was Instantly developed; first of course
and chiefly at Alexandria, but also in Jerusalem,
Constantinople, and even Antioch the Monophysites

270 The Ecumenical Councils.
exhibited an unparalleled and violent activity. Mar-
clan's decrees enforcing uniformity followed one an
other in rapid succession. In A.D. 457 he was suc
ceeded by Leo I., who perplexed by the fierceness
and apparent hopelessness of the strife conceived the
idea of testing the real mind of the church by a very
natural though novel method. All the metropoUtans
were Instructed to procure the judgments of the
bishops subject to them not only upon certain Issues
raised by the enforcement but also upon the general
question of the validity of the decrees of Chalcedon.
Some sixteen hundred bishops responded, from all
quarters of the empire, and the verdict was over
whelmingly in favor of the decrees. Nevertheless the
Monophysites, making up In activity for their inferi
ority In numbers, continued more than to hold their
own in the great centres of the East.
In the year 470 Peter the Fuller succeeded In dis
placing the orthodox Incumbent from the patriarchal
throne of Antioch. This Peter was very active and
successful in propagating Monophysite views and
sentiments by incorporating them through liturgical
changes Into the pubhc worship of the church. Many
of his interpolations acquired immediate and general
popularity and were adopted even In catholic churches.
Thus in the Trisagion he introduced a clause in which
the triune God is addressed as having suffered for
us : " Holy God, Holy Strong One, Holy Immortal
One, who for our sakes wast crucified for us, have
mercy upon us!" Thus under the form of Theopas-
chltism was revived the old spirit and principle of
Patripassianism, and it became perhaps the most

Monophysite Propaganda. 271
insidious and successful of the aspects In which Mo
nophysitism continued not only to hold its own against
the church but also to make Its way within It, untU in
the Fifth General Council It won a decisive success
if not a permanent victory. The phrases " mother of
God," " God was crucified" and the like, while con
taining a precious truth which the piety of the oppo
site side was not disposed to contradict, were never
theless characteristic of Monophysitism and were part
of a systematic reference of the whole Incarnate ac
tivity of our Lord to his Godhead, and an ignoring
of all personally human activities in him. It is to be
observed that this aspect of Christianity always
appeals most powerfuUy to the heart of the popular
faith. In proportion as it is less moral It has the
appearance of being more religious. The more
mystically we surrender our minds and wills and
selves to the operations of the divine grace, and the
less reflectively we strive to realize our own parts in
the process of regaining our freedom and life In Christ
Jesus, the more honor we feel ourselves to be doing
to God who Is our sole salvation.
The Emperor Leo I. was succeeded A.D. 474 by
Zeno, who favored the cathohcs, untU In the year 482
he was led into a fatal scheme of reconciliation the
effect of which was only the more wildly and help
lessly to divide the two parties. We have not thought
it necessary for our purpose to go Into the detaUs of
the violent and often bloody strife that immediately
foUowed the Council of Chalcedon in Alexandria, the
proper home of Monophysitism. At the juncture we
have now reached the rival claimants of the patrlar-

272 The Ecumenical Councils.
chal throne were appealing to the church at large for
recognition. Rome favored the orthodox candidate,
but Acacius of Constantinople and the Emperor Zeno
were unfortunately persuaded that to recognize the
Monophysite contestant, Peter Mongus, would be to
begin at the heart of aU the trouble over a gradual
compromise and reconcUiation. Mongus affected a
moderation and desire for peace that lasted only
untU he had attained his object, but under the Influ
ence of his representations the emperor with the aid
of Acacius drew up and Issued an edict of union
that was known as the Henoticon (kvt^riKov). It
was a confession of faith based upon the first three
general councils and Ignoring that of Chalcedon. All
disputed terms and phrases were avoided and the
issues dividing the parties carefully kept out of sight.
The effect, as has been said, was only to multiply the
number of parties and to Increase the irritation be
tween them. Each side was divided Into two, of
which the most politic and least sincere accepted the
compromise, while the zealots withdrew into a wider
and more embittered separation. Then outside of
these were the very many of all views who resented
the presumption of the emperor In promulgating a
doctrinal formula in his own name. The right of the
emperor even to force the church to define and then
to enforce the definition had been long recognized,
but Zeno was the first to undertake himself to declare
what was the faith of the church. Rome of course
resisted the compromise ; Pope Felix III. after long
remonstrating in vain excommunicated Acacius. The
excommunication was disregarded in the East and the

Justinian as Mediator. 273
result was a schism which lasted for nearly forty
years. In 491 Zeno was succeeded by Anastasius,
who during a reign of twenty-four years persisted
faithfully and conscientiously In carrying out a scheme
of conciliation that kept all the capitals of the East
In perpetual and fruitless turmoil and strife. Justin,
who succeeded to the empire in 5 18, was orthodox and
during his reign of eleven years the centres of contro
versy for the most part returned to the fold of Chal
cedon. Acacius and the Emperors Zeno and Anas
tasius were stricken from the diptychs; communion
was resumed with Rome and the West ; Alexandria
alone remained true to Monophysitism and thither
the leaders of the party betook themselves and bided
their time.
The long and Ulustrious reign of Justinian began
A.D. 527. The Empress Theodora was an ardent
adherent of Monophysitism and under her patronage
the sect revived and reorganized Itself everywhere.
Even In Constantinople a covert Monophysite was
through her influence elevated to the patriarchate.
Justinian himself began his reign as a positive and
decided Chalcedonian, but was not long in contracting
the imperial mania for acting the part of a theological
as weU as political mediator between the parties. His
first movement of concession toward the Monophy
sites was in connection with the Theopaschite contro.
versy originated by Peter Fuller's Uturgical interpola
tions. The popularity of the added phrase, "God
who wast crucified for us!" had grown steadily in
the intervening years. There was a devotional and
religious element In It that appealed to the mystical

2 74 The Ecumenical Councils.
spirit in us which welcomes the closest approach and
Identification of God himself with us In our extremest
experiences. It seemed only to Involve the same
principle which the church had already affirmed in Its
formal adoption of the Theotocos. If it was God who
was born of the Virgin, it was God also who was
crucified upon Calvary. There was a revolt against
Leo's distribution of the actions and passions of our
Lord between the Godhead and the manhood, the
miracles to the former, the sufferings to the latter.
There was but one subject of all the actions and the
passions, the divine Person Incarnate, and Leo's posi
tion was but a latent Nestorianism. The liturgical
formula had found acceptance In Constantinople. In
Justin's reign an effort was made, but without success,
to gain recognition for the amended form of the Tri
sagion. The attempt was transferred to Rome, where
Pope Hormisdas condemned the formula as heretical.
But under his successor it found favor, and the ablest
Western theologian maintained that it was orthodox
to say that " one of the Trinity was born and was
crucified." Justinian's first act of conciliation was
to sanction the formula by a special edict issued
A.D. 533. Twenty years afterward the Fifth General
CouncU anathematized all who should reject It.
Soon after his favorable edict Justinian was moved
by an exposure of the secret machinations of the
Monophysites, under the patronage of the empress,
to attempt once more a policy of repression and
persecution. This only led to renewed trouble, and
finaUy to the revolt of the Monophysite province of
Armenia to the Persians. The effect was to bring

Edict of the Three Chapters. 275
back the emperor to his plan of reconciliation, and
not long after began the famous controversy of " the
Three Chapters," the most important movement in
the present stage of our subject since it led to the
Fifth General Council and constituted its subject-
matter. It was Justinian's personal ambition to go to the
heart of the whole matter and settle It by a theologi
cal treatise of his own which should convince the
Monophy-sltes by answering all their objections to the
Council of Chalcedon. But although ambitious of
being an authority and disposed to be a despot in
spiritual as well as temporal matters, the emperor was
open to influence, sometimes In opposite directions.
If judiciously applied. He was now persuaded that
what was needed and would be efficacious to recon
cUe the Monophysites was formally to complete the
church's condemnation of Nestorianism; and this
could only be accomplished by condemning Theodore
of Mopsuestia and at least such of the works of
Theodoret and Ibas as were directed against Cyril,
who with the Monophysites stood even above Atha
nasius as the defender and representative of the faith.
Theodoret and Ibas, who had charged Cyril with
ApoUinarianism, had themselves been acquitted of all
charges of heresy by the Council of Chalcedon. A
condemnation would be equally acceptable as against
them and as a blow at the authority of the councU.
In 544 Justinian issued his edict of the Three
Chapters, in which were anathemarized the person
and the works of Theodore and the particular works
but not the persons of Theodoret and Ibas. This act

276 The Ecumenical Councils.
combined In a single pohcy the emperor, the empress
and a certain portion of both parties, the catholics
being deterred by that which most commended it to
the Monophysites, — the fact namely that to a cer
tain extent It contravened the action of Chalcedon.
Like its predecessors It proved to be a measure of
compulsory conciliation, which was more successful.
If it was so, only because the influence of Justinian
was more compelling. The Eastern patriarchs were
brought by bribery and Intimidation to yield an un
wiUing subscription to the edict. The chief opposition
came from North Africa, lUyria and Dalmatia where
the bishops refused to damn the dead or to put a
sUght upon the decisions of Chalcedon. But the most
remarkable feature in the controversy of the Three
Chapters was the relation to It of the Pope Vigillus.
Vigilius had secured the papal chair through the In
fluence of Theodora at the price of his cooperation
with the Monophysite leaders in opposition to the
Chalcedonian Decrees. He had put in writing his
substantial agreement with them, had rejected the
doctrine of the two natures after the union, and had
anathematized those who, with Leo, distributed the
acts and sufferings of our Lord between his deity and
his humanity. When firmly established in his seat
however he had changed his tone. Before subscribing
the edict, he submitted It to the Western theologian
Fulgentius Ferrandus, whose decision was adverse, —
mainly upon the grounds already taken by others, (l)
that it was unwise to unsettle the action of general
councils, and (2) that deceased brethren were beyond
the reach of human judgment. Vigilius, vacillating

The Fifth General Council. 277
between what he felt to be the sentiment of the
Western Church, his past compromises with the
Monophysites, and the pressure of the emperor, was
in 547 summoned by the latter to Constantinople
where he was detained seven years by the emperor's
persistent determination to conciliate the church In
despite of Itself. More than once Vigilius consented
to the condemnation of the Three Chapters and then
bending before the storm of opposition from the West,
that proceeded in one Instance even to the point
of his excommunication by the church of North
Africa, retracted his condemnation. In 5 5 1 he begged
the emperor to convene a general council, pending
which he might withhold his final decision. The
emperor consented upon the condition that he should
bind himself by an oath not to recede from the con
demnation of the Three Chapters. In 553 the Fifth
General Council, the Second of Constantinople, met
and finally with much delay and trouble extorted a
judgment from VigUius. He had now Western theo
logians by his side and for once decided firmly and
adversely. He would not (i) condemn In the person
of Theodore a writer who had died in the communion
of the church, nor (2) pronounce heretical the works
of Theodoret and Ibas which had received the sanc
tion of Chalcedon. Thereupon the emperor and the
council broke off all communion with Vigilius and
proceeded to act without him. The edict of the Three
Chapters was adopted as it stood; Theodore was
anathematized in his person and works and the par
ticular writings of the others were condemned. Then
the opposition of VIgUius broke down ; he accepted

278 The Ecumenical Councils.
the authority and subscribed the decisions of the
council. There was great dissatisfaction in the West,
resulting in a schism of many bishops for many years.
But there was nothing for VigiUus's successors to do
but to accept and sustain his action. And so in the
West as In the East the council was recognized as the
Fifth Ecumenical.
But the great body of the more zealous and sincere
Monophysites was not conciliated. Under the suc
cessors of Justinian, Justin II. and Tiberius, repressive
measures were once more resorted to, and of course
once more failed. The Monophysite communities
retain ecclesiastical organizations to this day in Syria,
Armenia, Egypt and Abyssinia.
In tracing, as we .shall now endeavor to do, the
Inner, intellectual and spiritual movement of Mono
physitism between the Fourth and Fifth General
Councils, we may limit ourselves to just those ele
ments that are of permanent and present interest and
value, passing over many detaUs of tentative and
temporary thought that distracted and divided the
party within Itself.
The general and characteristic principle of Mo
nophysitism, that of the \iid or p-ovr^ (pvaig, the one or
single nature of the incarnate Lord, is this : that while
he combined two natures in himself he so combined
them that in him they were not merely morally or
gnomically but physically or naturally one. It was
not a unity of two, either persons or natures, acting
as one, but of one, both person and nature, incapable
of acting as two. He was not only one only subject
of action but exerted one only kind or mode of ac-

Principle of Monophysitism. 279
tlvlty (svepyeeo). He did not act as both God and man
or, as Leo represented it, now as God and now as
man, but always as the one person that he was. This
unity of action or operation, as will be readily felt,
might be conceived In several different ways, but as a
matter of fact the Monophysite conception was that
as our Lord's person was only divine so his whole
being and activity even In the flesh was determined
only after the divine mode. It was as God that he
not merely assumed humanity, taught the truth,
worked miracles and destroyed sin and death, but
also was humanly born, hungered, suffered and died.
What then and where was the human nature that
he assumed ? It was by the physical act and fact of
union with the divine so deified as to lose its own
proper kvipyeia, and to become a mere veil, garment
or mode of visIblHty of the activity of the divine. Or
rather, more than a mere means of vIsibUity, the hu
manity of our Lord Is that in which and by means of
which the deity renders Itself capable of a kind of
activity of which it Is Incapable in Itself ; the capacity
that is to suffer with and for us. But the whole
significance of the human nature of our Lord Is that
It is that in which God may act, and may be capable
of acting. In a certain way. There Is no room for any
human action, nor Indeed any need or demand for
any. The whole activity of the incarnation Is a purely
divine and not a human activity. According to the
extremest view, our Lord's very body was so deified
by natural conjunction with deity that it was no longer
subject to Its natural functions and laws. If It
hungered, was weary, suffered or died. It was not

28o The Ecumenical Councils.
because It need have done so or indeed did so but
only because our divine Lord willed to experience
and endure these things in it. If he performed any
even the most natural and automatic act In the body
It was not an Involuntary action of his body but a
voluntary act of himself, because we cannot conceive
of God as being for a moment reaUy subject to the
laws or conditions of matter. There was every gra
dation of view from this up to a merely imperceptible
difference from the position of the church; Indeed
there' were Monophysites who held a truer humanity
of the Lord than the current doctrine of catholics.
The lower and higher views came thus to divide, as
they still divide, the Monophysites into the sects of
the Julianlsts and the Severians. But in the highest
view of Severus himself, who approached most nearly
to the church and was the greatest of the Monophy
sites, while there was a disposition and an effort to
recognize the continuance in the incarnation of a real
humanity, It was only a humanity In its lowest and
least distinctively human attributes and activities.
According to him the body of Christ was really a
human body, but was the mind, were the affections,
was the will, were the moral and spiritual functions
and dispositions, actions and character of our Lord
human also ? But it is all these things that constitute
a real manhood, a really human nature, activity and
life. If our Lord was indeed a man in all respects
like unto us, then how can we except any of these
things in which our manhood consists? But Severus
excepts them every one and leaves after the union
not one single attribute or activity distinctive of an

The Scientific Difliculty, 281
actual humanity. He is wholly unwilling to concede
to the human soul that reality which he concedes to
the human body. Our Lord, e.g., has but one con
sciousness, one knowledge, and that the divine. From
the moment of the union of the natures. I.e. from the
moment of the conception In the womb, the con
sciousness of Jesus was that of the divine Logos ; his
knowledge was omniscience. The growth in wisdom
was only apparent; there was never any limitation
and therefore could be no increase or progress. He
only gradually revealed or exhibited outwardly that
which inwardly was complete and perfect in him
from the first. So our Lord had only one, and that
the Infinitely and eternally perfect divine will. He
was no more capable of moral than of mental progress
and growth. It could not have been In any actual
sense, for himself, that he learned obedience or was
made perfect by the things he suffered. The cry,
" Not as I will but as thou wilt! " represents no real
conflict or struggle of wills. It was not uttered out
of any human exigency or need of his own. His
natural utterances of Ignorance or of weakness are
only to be heard by us ; he utters them not for him
self but for us, for our example and instruction.
The difficulty within Monophysitism Itself and the
impossibiUty at the time of any answer to it from
the church were due to two main causes, one scien
tific, the other religious. The scientific difficulty
was that neither party, and the church less than the
Monophysites, knew exactly what It meant by the
terms " nature " and " person," upon which the whole
controversy hinged. The Monophysites were con-

282 The Ecumenical Councils.
vlnced that to attribute to our Lord a complete hu
man nature, a humanity In which nothing Is lacking
that is human, would necessarily be to make him a
human as well as divine person, and this seemed to
them equivalent to making him two persons. They
saw Indeed that the church itself whatever it might
avow in theory did not hold in practice the opposite
truths which It had imposed upon the faith of the
world by the authority of Chalcedon. Men either
did not hold the one personality or else they did not
hold the totaUty of both natures. Even Leo neither
successfully conceived our Lord as one person nor
wholly conceded to him the two natures. What was
needed to refute Monophysitism was the fuller truth,
which was then still in the future, not that our Lord
was God and man In the sense that he was sometimes
and in some things God and at other times and In
other things man, but that his entire incarnate activ
ity was at once that of a divine and that of a human
person, and yet not that of two but of only one person
both divine and human. What was still lacking to
render this conception practically and scientifically as
well as theoretically and mysticaUy possible we shall
endeavor to show later.
The religious difficulty was in effect an even greater
one, since in relation to it the church was scarcely less
Monophysite than the Monophysites. The principle
of the one incarnate nature is, as we have seen, that
the whole change In the humanity of our Lord
through the incarnation is the Immediate, Instantane
ous, physical or natural and necessary result of Its
assumption by deity. The man Jesus Is holy not

The Religious Difliculty. 283
yvufixi but (j)vaei, by fact and necessity of nature, i.e.
of his divine nature, and not through any choice,
freedom or will of his human nature. There is no
room for and there is no conception of a spiritual and
moral as distinguished from a physical and necessary
Incarnation. The humanity in no sense Incarnates
divinity ; it is wholly the divinity which incarnates
Itself in the humanity. There is no real significance
in the human holiress, obedience and self-sacrifice of
our Lord ; the whl meaning and value of it is that
God thus suffers in us and for us. The truth that
God is incarnate in a humanity which itself In him
dies to sin and Hves to God, which Is the truth of the
New Testament, is not yet that of the church. There
is a one-sided mystical piety which Is willing that
God shall be everything in us and is not willing that
we shall, by consequence, be everything in God,
whereas the whole truth of Jesus Christ is that in
him not only God became human but man also
became divine.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE MONOTHELITES AND THE THIRD COUNCIL
OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
|ONOPHYSITISM having under its suc
cessive defeats and persecutions with
drawn to the distant confines of the em
pire, the church was left for a season at
peace. But the elements of the unsolved
problem were still in a state of ferment, and the con
troversy soon broke out anew under the altered form
of Monothelitism. The successive issues as they were
raised and discussed may be briefly stated as follows :
By the suppression or expulsion of the revolt
against the Council of Chalcedon the question of the
single or double nature was, in terms at least, settled
in favor of the latter. That being conceded, shall
we say that there were In our Lord not only two
complete natures but two complete ivipyeiai, or de
veloped activities, of the natures? No, it was an
swered; for though there are two natures there is
only one person who acts in both ; and consequently
there can be but one operation or activity. It is as
much the divine Logos incarnate who performs all the
acts that we call human as who performs those that
284

One Will or Two? 285
are divine. It wIU be seen at once that this was
giving back to the Monophysites all that had been
taken away from them. They had never meant to
deny to our Lord a potential but only an actual
human nature ; such a humanity as this, devoid of Its
ISiKfj evipyeta, its proper functions and activities, they
could never have hesitated to concede to him. It
will not surprise us to learn that by this seemingly
slight concession to them on the part of the church
very many Monophysites, even In Egypt their strong
hold, were won over and reconciled. But there were
also those who protested at once and bitterly that to
concede that was to concede everything; that the
doctrine of the single functioning or activity of the
natures was all that Monophysitism claimed In the
single nature. And the church awoke In time to the
danger and repudiated the concession.
The next issue to be raised was this : Conceding both
the double nature and the double activity In the incar
nation, how then are we to assume or assure the unity
of the personal life of our Lord? The answer was
undertaken to be given in Monothelitism. In the single
personality Is involved the necessity of a single will.
Our Lord could not have had two wIUs for then he
would have been two persons. He had two natures
and two corresponding modes of action but It was
one and the same wIU that acted through both and
consequently though different In outward form his
acts are identical In source and internal character.
To this there were many objections and replies, (i)
There can no more be a human activity without a
human wiU than a human nature without a human

286 The Ecumenical Councils.

activity. The will is the essence of the evipyeta as the
latter is but the actuality and acrivity of the nature ;
if one is human aU three must be. (2) This Involved
the psychological question whether the wIU Is a part
of the person or a part of the nature, the church
practicaUy deciding in favor of the latter. (3) The
Lord himself consistently represents his own will as
human, " I seek not my own will, but his that sent
me," "Not as I wIU but as thou wilt;" and the
Monothelites are forced to be always explaining away
his words in an unnatural sense.
This point secured, yet another Issue remained to
be met. What then was there to secure the accord
and unity of the two wills, and was there not a pos
sibility of the human will falling away from the divine ?
Unfortunately, as we shall see, the church which in
the next general council with a sure Instinct settled
as far as the third point was unprepared as yet to
meet the fourth. The double natures, the double
functions and the double wills were now affirmed, but
with regard to the problem of our Lord's human
freedom the matter was left In a suspense that was
to operate for a very long time against not only any
further progress of the truth but even the securing and
applying what had been attained. The ablest of the
theologians who had gone so far and done so much
to vindicate the now almost complete construction of
our Lord's manhood faltered at the last step. For
the nature they demanded a true actuality or activity
and for the activity a true human will, but to the
will they hesitated and declined to attribute a real
freedom. But is not freedom as essential to will as

Maximus Confessor. 287
will to action or action to the nature of which It Is
the proper function ?
The ablest of the antl-Monothelite theologians of
the church was Maximus, who did much to reestablish
and preserve the truth of a not merely corporeal but
intellectual, moral and spiritual humanity In our Lord.
He rises very far above the Idea that the human na
ture was only something to be acted In and through
by an invisible divine agent, the Logos. Has the
Logos, he asks, annihilated the will and activity of
the human soul in which he Is incarnate ? What are
our Lord's faith and love and other virtues if they
are not realized by the free will and Independent
activity of his human soul? If he does not possess
all the attributes that constitute our nature, especially
the proper will and activity of the soul, then his
humanity is on a level with the irrational creatures.
Especially what shall we say of the holy and right
eous obedience of our Lord unto death? How could
he say, " I am come not to do my own will, but that
I may accomplish the work and keep his commands " ?
Was It all the obedience of the Logos to God or the
obedience of his humanity ? The former view makes
the divine nature of our Lord a subject and a servant,
after the manner of Arius. We must assume the
existence of a human will distinct from that of the
Logos (Maximus, as quoted by Dorner).
Thus Maximus not only asserts for our Lord a true
human wUl, but secures to It a relative independence
from the overpowering and effacing activity of the
Logos in and through It. But the freedom which he
thus preserves in one connection he surrenders in

288 The Ecumenical Councils.
another. In order to Insure the certainty of his hu
man obedience, he attributes to our Lord not that
truly human holiness which Is the result of freedom
and choice and of an actual human development and
growth, but a holiness necessary and complete from
the first and Incapable of progress or change. It is
a holiness ^vaei, though not by his divine but by his
human nature. It is the effect of his virgin birth by
the power of the Holy Ghost that his humanity Is
drpeuTog, Incapable of moral change. Thus his hu
manity is not only not ours which Is fallen but It is
not that of Adam which was capable of falling ; It is
a third kind which was neither. And a holiness by
necessity of nature and not by act of will is no more
a human holiness because the nature is a so-called
human one that cannot sin than If It were the divine
nature. It wiU be seen that there seemed to be two possible
ways to provide for the unchangeableness of our
Lord's human holiness and obedience. One was
the Monophysitic one of so subordinating and sub
jecting the human to the divine as to leave It no
freedom or activity of its own. The other was to
ascribe to the human an Independence from the divine
but to ascribe to it in its own nature, by some fore
gone action upon It usually associated with the
miraculous birth, an Impossibility of sinning. Dorner
has clearly proved that the last general council, at
Constantinople, under the opposite influences operat
ing upon it combined these two contradictory safe
guards In a manner so vacillating and inconsistent as
to constitute a serious charge against Its ecumenicity.

Sequence of Events. 289
But a council is catholic so far as It Is so and no
further, and the Sixth General Council did add ma
terial elements to the construction of the doctrine of
our Lord's person. Its contribution was the assertion
of the proper humanity not only of the Incarnate
nature of our Lord, as decided at Chalcedon, but as
essential constituents of it of his activity and will
within the nature. So far it was catholic, and not
as regards the still unsolved question of the freedom
of the human wUl.
We must now briefly sketch the progress of events
from the origin of the MonotheUte agitation to its
close in what is known as the Sixth and last Ecu
menical Council. The philosophical connection of the
movement with the physical and mystical speculations
of the author known as the Pseudo-Dionyslus Areo-
pagitica we need only allude to. The system of
Dionysius, which at this time and afterward exerted
a great influence upon the theology of the church,
was a pantheistic, Neoplatonic appropriation and
appHcation of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation
to the explanation of the Immanent relation of God
to nature and to man. Many of its ideas and much
of its phraseology, partly derived from Christianity,
easily returned to their source and were Incorporated
into later Christian speculations, mainly of a Monoph
ysitic tendency. Thus was derived the character
istic phrase of this stage of the MonotheUte movement,
as descriptive of our Lord's incarnate activity, \iia
eeavdpLK.ri evipyeta, " one theandric or divine-human
activity." The beginning of the discussion, as we
have said, was as foUows : Conceding the two natures

290 The Ecumenical Councils.
in our Lord, are we to concede also two series of
activities or only a single either divine or divine-
human activity? Here we must discriminate two
different kinds of unity, an essential and an actual or
practical unity. Of course every one must and even
the Nestorians did most of all affirm the practical
unity of our Lord's will and activity. However truly
the wills and activities in him were two in nature they
were certainly one in operation; they were so in ac
cord and harmony in their every movement that while
physically and potentially two they were actually one.
This gnomic unity, as It was caUed, Is relative ; It is
a unity in difference, an accord or harmony or con
currence of two or more. Now the real danger
perhaps and certainly constant fear of such a gnomic
unity was that it would end, even though it did not
begin. In a Nestorian duality of persons In our Lord.
The church itself largely shared the Monophysitic
disposition to ascribe not a gnomic or moral but an
essential or necessary unity if not to our Lord's na
ture yet to his activity in the natures. They said.
It is not the nature that acts but the person in the
nature. Consequently If our Lord is one person
though In two natures his activity is essentially one,
although in two modes or through two series of
external conditions.
There were poHtical as weU as religious reasons
why such a compromise with Monophysitism should
commend itself just at this time. In the face of the
Mohammedan Invasions the Emperor HeracUus was
anxious to unite the empire and especiaUy to bring
about peace among the Christians of Egypt. The

Sergius of Constantinople. 291
patriarch Cyrus of Alexandria was his personal friend
and agent, appointed there with this especial end in
view. And this doctrinal concession had enabled
Cyrus to reconcile the Monophysites by thousands.
While the work of conciliation was thus going on in
Egypt It suddenly encountered a violent opposition
in the person of a monk Sophronius, who soon after
became patriarch of Jerusalem. This interruption
led to a reference by Cyrus of the question of the
p-td ivipyeia, to which Sophronius had taken exception,
to the patriarch Sergius of Constantinople. Sergius
after a careful examination of the matter expressed
himself as of one mind with Cyrus but counselled
him, for the sake not only of the truth but of the
work of peace he was accomplishing, to avoid the use
of both phrases, the ptd evipyeta and the 6vb kvipyetai.
The first, he said, was new and might by some be
Identified with Monophysitism ; the second was clearly
false, since it would lead to two wills, sometimes op
posed, which v/as impossible in one person ; It would
involve therefore a Nestorian separation of the hu
manity from the deity. " The doctrine of the God-
taught fathers Is that the humanity of the Lord never
acts by itself or in opposition to the suggesrions of
the Logos hypostatically united with it, but merely
when, as and In the measure in which God the
Logos willed It. As our body Is governed by the
soul, so was the entire human life system of Christ
always and in all things impelled by God." Much
depends of course in language Hke this upon
whether It is meant that the deity acts spiritually and
morally upon the humanity and influences it through

292 The Ecumenical Councils.

the human wIU and free activity, or whether the
meaning Is that It acts upon it physically and neces
sarily; in the latter case the activity is essentially
and not morally one, which denies to our Lord any
possibility of a human holiness or obedience and
makes his entire spiritual and moral activity that of
God alone and not of man at all.
Sergius had at first prevailed upon both Cyrus and
Sophronius to forbear discussion and dispute In view
of the interests at stake. But subsequently foresee
ing that Sophronius, as patriarch of Jerusalem, would
not continue to maintain silence, he submitted the
whole matter in a full account of it to Honorius,
bishop of Rome. Honorius gave it the most thorough
consideration and in a very careful and clear analysis
of the point at issue carried, for the first time, the
whole question back from that of two natures or two
operations to that of two wills in our Lord. The
unity of the two natures, he maintained, was to be
secured by the principle not of a tma operatic but of
a unus operator. It lay neither In the natures nor In
the functions or activities of the natures, but In the
person. Our Lord being one person possessed one
will which acted In two modes of operation. Thus
Honorius, bishop of Rome, was the first to give sys
tematic statement to the doctrine of the one wiU in
our Lord, and was the true originator of Monothe
litism. Meanwhile the Emperor Heraclius was Impatient
for a basis upon which to settle the disturbance cre
ated by Sophronius and to resume the work of con
ciliation. In A.D. 638 he Issued his "EKfeatf niareug.

Honorius Originator of Monothelitism, 293
or exposition of the faith, taking substantially the
position of Honorius, forbidding any further discussion
of the single or double activity and enforcing the
doctrine of the one will. But quite apart from the
Inherent difficulties In this new solution of the problem
of our Lord's unity in duality, what was much more
practically to the point was the fact that this doctrine
of Honorius's was In direct contradiction to the point
of view of Leo and the Epistle to Flavian, to say
nothing of the formula of Chalcedon. The conse
quence was that after Honorius's death In 638 his
successors at once reversed the attitude of the Roman
see and entered upon a war to the death with Mo
nothelitism. The new emperor Constans adjusted
himself to the change in the situation to the extent
of substituting for the "'Sindeatg of his predecessor his
own TvTTOf T^f niareug, In which all discussion was for
bidden not only of the one or two operations but of
the one or two wiUs. But this was equally Inade
quate, and the Lateran CouncU of 649, under Pope
Martin I., condemned the Tvnog for undertaking to
suppress the truth of the two wiUs. In this stage of
the controversy the most prominent and ablest of the
theologians of the church was Maximus, of whom we
have already spoken. The position of Maximus was
substantially In the line of Leo and his Tome. He
vindicated the posirion of the will as a constituent
element In the idea of a rational being and therefore
in the nature and operation of our Lord's humanity
If it is real. " He was even as a man essentially
a voluntary being. The saying of the fathers that
Christ moulded our will does not mean that the Logos

294 The Ecumenical Councils,
determined the wUl of Christ; but that he as a man
subjected humanity in himself and through himself to
God the Father, thus setting us an example of a
perfect kind that we also may voluntarily submit
ourselves " (Dorner). Here almost for the first time
In this Christological discussion we have something
like an adequate recognition of the full significance
of our Lord's human activity in the work of our re
demption and completion. The whole truth of Christ
is twofold and requires the totahty of both sides, as
Leo said better than he either knew or meant In the
totus in suis, totus in nostris. Not only does it not
consist solely in something which God became or did
as God In the nature of man, something which deity
suffered or accomphshed by suffering, but even the
divine part in the incarnation Is most properly mani
fested In what man does and becomes. The truth as
It is In Jesus is humanity's death to sin and life to
God. It Is an act at once of God In humanity and
equally of humanity In God. The human Jesus by
the way of the cross brings man into at-one-ment
with God and redemption from sin and death. As
Maximus expresses It, he as a man subjected humanity
in himself and through himself to God the Father.
A human activity that Is thus the redemption and
completion of humanity must have been in itself
not only the activity of a very real and actual hu
manity but a very human activity of It. It must
have been quite as really an activity of manhood as
It was of Godhead.
This Maximus saw and attempted to secure ; if he
still fell short in one or more respects It was only

Excuse for the Monothelitic Revolt. 295
because the spiritual science of his day was still In
complete. A brief reference to the defects of his
thought will prepare us to see wherein It needed to
be completed.
In the first place the real cause and we may almost
say justification of the great Monothelitic revolt from
the church lay in the fact that the predominant mind
of the latter as represented by Leo and now even by
Maximus did not offer to it any real unity of the
natures In Christ. One personal subject lived and
acted in both, and they were thus united In him but
they were not united In themselves. In him they
remained distinct and apart and he acted now In one
of them and now In the other. The MonotheHtes
could not see any difference of consequence or value
between this and the dual personality of Nestorianism.
The two natures, they said with much truth, are never
truly combined In your one Christ but remain forever
outside and alongside of each other. Their only unity
Is that the personal subject of both is the divine
Logos, who in the divine nature acts In accordance
with what is proper to it and in the human nature
acts in and through what Is distinctive and constitutive
of it, e.g. through a human will and activity. This
is no real unity but only a juxtaposition and concord
of two forever separate and different things. If such
an activity In two distinct natures were reaUy carried
out through the totality of the functions of both It
would necessarily result in two personaUties as well
as personal activities. It only does not, if Indeed It
does not, because the church does not really allow to
our Lord, what it professes to do, a complete and

296 The Ecumenical Councils.
actual human wUl, activity, or nature. This was a
very real objection, the explanation of which lay In
the fact that even Maximus had not yet outgrown the
old and well-nigh universal conception that the divine
and human natures are two essentially different and
mutually exclusive things, which may be brought into
juxtaposition and accord with each other but Into no
closer relation of unity. The church needed to feel
more deeply and truly that it is the very nature of
the divine Logos of humanity to become human as
it is also the nature of humanity to become divine.
So Uttle is either changed from itself or Into the
other by becoming it, as the church feared, that it
only truly becomes itself In becoming the other.
God as Logos of man only fulfils himself as and in
man, and man as son and image of God only realizes
and becomes himself in God. Both of these ends are
revealed as accompUshed in Jesus Christ.
In the second place, we have already seen how
Maximus, In his praiseworthy effort to secure the
humanity of our Lord from a mere absorption and
loss of itself or of all that Is prope .ly distinctive of
itself In the divinity, attempts to preserve the immu
tability of his holy obedience by the alternative de
vice of ascribing to his very humanity, through the
action of the Holy Ghost In his miraculous birth, a
character that not only separates it from ours which
is fallen but from Adam's which was capable of faU
ing. The difficulty is that that at once renders our
Lord's holy obedience in our nature unlike that of
any reaUy human being whether unfaUen or fallen.
A hoHness <^voet, by necessity of nature either human

The Sixth General Council. 297
or divine. Is not a human holiness. The true opera
tion of the Holy Ghost in our Lord was not to make
the nature physically and necessarily holy In him but
to make him as a man (as Maximus himself had said)
spiritually and morally holy in the nature.
The dyothellte reaction In Rome after Honorius had
seriously interfered with if It had not defeated the
emperor's scheme of conciliation, as It led at last to
another schism between Rome and Constantinople.
The emperor resorted to persecution and at Intervals
of six or seven years, Martin I., Maximus and other
leaders of the catholic opponents of Monothelitism
died as martyrs In exile and under the most inhuman
treatment. In 678 Constantine Pogonatus ended the
unhappy strife by entering into negotiations with Dom-
nus. Bishop of Rome, to summon a general councU.
The Sixth General Council assembled in Constanti
nople A.D. 680. A circular letter from Agatho, who
In the meantime had succeeded Domnus, was destined
to perform somewhat the same part In Its decisions
that Leo's had done at Chalcedon. And the doctrinal
position of Agatho was little more than a reproduction
of that of Leo, with only such further development
of statement as was necessitated by over two centuries'
further progress of thought. He affirms the two
natures, two natural wUls and two activities. And
then, quite in the Hne of Leo, but with much more
fulness and elaborateness, he Ulustrates from the
Scriptures the long contrast of disrihctly human and
distinctly divine acts performed by our Lord, con
cluding with the affirmation that " scriptural passages
must in general be understood to refer now to the

298 The Ecumenical Councils.
humanity, now to the divinity of Christ. ' ' The symbol
of the council was in substantial accord with the
views of Agatho, so that its proceedings may be cor
rectly characterized as supplementary to those of
Chalcedon. Apart from the doctrinal symbol adopted by the
council, the points of interest connected with It are
the foUowing. The Emperor Constantine Pogonatus
opened the proceedings in person, attended by
thirteen officers of the court. On his left hand
were ranged the Roman legates, the archbishop of
Ravenna and " the remaining bishops subject to
Rome"; on his right hand were the patriarchs of
Constantinople, Antioch, and a representative of the
patriarch of Alexandria, and " the remaining bishops
subject to Constantinople." Thus the relative posi
tions of primacy accorded to the two capital cities of
the world. Old and New Rome, were duly observed.
Early In the council complaints were received from
the legates of Agatho of the novel teaching of Cyrus
of Alexandria and Sergius of Constantinople and
his three successors with regard to the one activity
and wUl of our Lord. Nothing was said of Honorius
who had developed their opinions into the Monothe
litism which the council was assembled to condemn.
In the twelfth and thirteenth actions the whole cor
respondence of Cyrus, Sergius and Honorius to which
reference was made in the historical sketch was read
before the council. Whereupon these three with the
three successors of Sergius were cast out of the church
as heretics and betrayers of the truth.
The definition signed by aU present at the close. In

John of Damascus. 299
the presence of the emperor, consisted of (i) a dec
laration of agreement with the five previous general
councils of the church, (2) the recital and acceptance
of the two creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople In their
original forms, (3) Its own definition, to which was
appended the anathema against those by name. In
cluding Honorius, who had been condemned for
Monothellrism. Agatho having died about the time
of the close of the council, the proceedings were
transmitted by the emperor to his successor Leo II. ,
who promptly returned his acceptance of all the acts
of the council. Including the excommunication of
Honorius as a traitor to the faith.
In the middle of the following century (about A.D.
750) the long course of theological and Christological
thought that constituted the concUIar period of the
church came to a close in the person of John of Da
mascus, who sums up and completes the dogmatical
contribution of the Greek Church to the Chrisrian
faith. His principal work, " Concerning the Orthodox
Faith," covers aU the results of the great councUs.
But he treats in a separate work the question of the
two wIUs, activities and remaining natural attributes
of Christ. " The same Lord Jesus Christ," he says,
" we acknowledge to be perfect God and perfect man.
He had all that the Father had with the exception
of aseity [I.e. the Son is from the Father whUe the
Father is a se, from himself alone] ; and all that the
first Adam had with the exceprion of sin. Whatever
naturally pertained to the two natures of which he
was constituted was also his, — two natural wills, the
divine and the human ; two natural activities ; a double

300 The Ecumenical Councils.
natural freedom of wiU, a divine and a human ; and
twofold wisdom and twofold knowledge. These are
the natural attributes without which the natures can
not subsist " (Dorner). It wUl be seen that John of
Damascus presses to the utmost the conclusions of
the councils. But beyond clearer statements and
fuller arguments he makes no further advance, if any
such remained to be made, in the science of Christol
ogy. After a brief interval the concUIar period was
to be succeeded by the scholastic.

CHAPTER XV.
ADOPTIONISM.
|ITH John of Damascus the long-sustained
movement of thought that had been the
life of the concUIar period came to a close
without completing Its immediate task.
Maximus, the Sixth General Council and
the general summation of Christological results so far
attained left the picture of the person of Christ lack
ing, by just one crowning trait, organic and logical
completion. And the final step had of necessity to
be taken somewhere, unless the mind of the church
were to cease to perform its living function.
The step was taken or attempted in an unexpected
quarter and under new and strange conditions, but that
the effort was a direct continuation of the process of
Christological construction which we have been trac
ing will appear of itself. That Adoptionism like
Nestorianism — with which though at a much later
stage and with distinct differences and improvements
It In general agreed — merited and needed decisive
correction If not the summary condemnation It re
ceived, we shall endeavor to show. But we shall also
endeavor to show that the church, whose action in
the matter is happily not to be received as universal
301

302 The Ecumenical Councils.
or final, by its indiscriminate and unquaUfied practical
extinction of Adoptionism Inflicted upon itself an
almost irreparable loss and regression. It has been
affirmed or admitted much more widely than by Dr.
Dorner that the extirpation of Adoptionism had the
practical effect of wiping out the gain of the later
general councils and putting back the mind of the
church to the stage of CyrU and the period preceding
the decrees of Chalcedon. In order to judge of the
justice of this charge let us briefly trace the doctrinal
origin, development and fate of Adoptionism.
It will be remembered that the action of Chalcedon
and of the Sixth and last General Council, the Third
of Constantinople, was gradually to develop the doc
trine of the real humanity of our Lord. Let us recall
the terms in which John of Damascus had summed
up the result of two and a half centuries of controversy
upon this one point : " Whatever pertained to the two
natures of which our Lord was constituted was also
his, — two natural wUls, the divine and the human ;
two natural activities ; a double natural freedom of
will, a divine and a human ; and twofold wisdom and
twofold knowledge. These are the natural attributes
without which the natures cannot exist." It Is un
necessary to attempt to trace the chain of circum
stances by which at the close of the eighth century,
a hundred years after the termination of Greek Chris
tology, the problem should be taken up just where it
had been broken off by the German or Gothic mind
of the farthest West, now for the first time specula
tively awakened. But so it was: Elipandus, arch
bishop of Toledo and primate of Spain, Felix of

Meaning of Adoptionism. 303
Urgellls, and perhaps the great body of the Spanish
church, then found themselves attempting to carry
out to Its logical conclusion the unfinished task of the
last general council In the East.
The conclusion that forced itself on their mind was
somewhat as follows : to attribute to our Lord (i) two
natures, (2) two activities proper or characteristic of
the natures, (3) two wills or volitional centres, and
(4) a twofold consciousness and freedom, is already
to have conceded to him a twofold personality. Herein
appeared at last the consequence that had all along
been so much dreaded and Its appearance developed
at once not only a blind and indiscriminating oppo
sition but also a practical retraction and abandonment
of the whole process that had so logically led up to
It, — that is, all the dyophysltic and dyothehtic gains
of the last three councils.
Let us endeavor more comprehensively and dis
passionately to discover what the Adoptionlsts reaUy
meant and what was the truth of our Lord that sought
utterance through them. Very much though by no
means aU of the misunderstanding arose from a
merely verbal ambiguity that now reached Its culmi
nation, from which we ourselves are not yet free : the
use of the terms " person " and " personality." At
one time we mean by "person" simply and identically
what Is meant by an ego, a subject of spiritual acriv-
itles. At other times we mean not the ego merely as
such but certain quallries or characteristics, a certain
nature of the ego. Thus we define personality and
say that a person Is one who possesses self-conscious
ness, reason and freedom. Now the whole cathohc

304 The Ecumenical Councils.
contention against the dangerous tendencies of Nes
torianism and Adoptionism means that there must be
no risk of thinking or representing two egos or sub
jects, a divine and a human. In our Lord. Each In
deed loudly disclaimed the two egos or double per-
sonalltics, but It by no means foUowed from that that
they were not logically Involved in their teachlng,and
the church did what It could to have it understood
once for all that any system of thought that by re
motest consequence Involved them stood thereby
condemned. Adoptionism never for an Instant IntentionaUy or
consciously impUed two egos or subjects in our Lord.
It held that the Logos was the one subject equaUy of
his humanity and his divinity. When It would ascribe
to him a human as well as a divine personality It used
the word In quite the other sense, arriving at Its con
clusion somewhat in the following way : if one define
personality to consist In or to be self-consciousness,
reason and freedom, and if one ascribe to our Lord
with John of Damascus, representing the mind of the
church, a distinctively and properly human conscious
ness, reason and freedom — how can one deny him
human personality ? Not that our Lord is two egos
or persons in that sense, but that the one Lord In his
divine consciousness, reason, freedom, character and
activity is a divine person, and in his human con
sciousness, reason, freedom, character and activity is
a human person. He is not alius et alius but he is
aliter et aliter; he Is not two persons but in the sense
in which we have defined the terms he possesses two
personalities or modes of personal consciousness,

Nature of our Lord's "Sonship." 305
thought, voHtion and action. He Is as truly a man,
which means a human person, as he is God, which
means a divine person. Adoptionism claimed to be
equally In agreement with the church in affirming the
one person of the Lord and In holding with the decrees
of 451 and 680 his twofold personal consciousness,
will and activity. What was the meaning. It asked,
of all that affirmation of a proper human nature, will,
activity, consciousness, reason and freedom in our
Lord, but that the Son of God was incarnate not in
an irrational. Involuntary and Impersonal but in a ra
tional, free and personal human nature and life ?
The motive and meaning of Adoptionism wUl better
appear, however, if we begin with the proper starting-
point from which It took its name. Because of the
ambiguity that has been pointed out it wisely did not
take its stand upon the claim of a twofold personality
but upon that of the twofold Sonship of our Lord.
The personal designations of the incarnate Lord
we know were two. Logos or Word and Son of God.
Of these the first designates him properly only in his
deity but the second may describe him In both his
divine and human natures. Both as God and as man
our Lord Is Son of God. His divine, proper or nat
ural Sonship by eternal generation from the substance
of the Father had been thoroughly developed and
defined and was universally understood and accepted
through the Trinitarian theology of the church. AU
were equaUy willing to accept the truth expressed in
the term " Theotocos " and In Theopaschitism, — the
Son of Mary is Son of God, and God suffered for us.
What is true of our Lord In one nature may be pred-

3o6 The Ecumenical Councils.
Icated of him In the other, or whatever is true of
either nature Is true of him who is the personahty of
both. But. Adoptionism whUe accepting these truths at
tempted, with what success we shall see, to proceed
to another : that of our Lord's not divine but human
Sonship to God. In the spirit in which Maximus in
vindication of the human activity of Christ had said,
" He as a man subjected humanity to God " — I.e.
brought it back Into unity with the divine nature and
life, — in precisely the same spirit and sense, though
further developed, the Adoptionlsts taught that Jesus
Christ as man had brought humanity in his person
Into a new relationship of sonship to God. The Son-
ship thus predicated of our Lord and first realized by
him In humanity is distinctively human and not divine,
of grace and not by nature; whereas in his eternal
and divine nature he is vibg \6iog, proper or essential
Son of God, in his human nature or as man he is vibg
Gerog, constituted or adopted Son of God.
Truth In Itself and scriptural value underlay this
point of view to a degree not apprehended by the
catholic mind of the church, and for the time being
that mind rejected it. As it has come up again and
will continue to come up for rehearing and a fairer
judgment it may be well to glance In passing at Its
New Testament basis.
In the Epistle to the Ephesians St. Paul describes
humanity as having been eternally predestined to
vioOeaia, or the relation to God of a vtbg Oerbg. Trans
lated Into ordinary language this means that man is
constituted by his spiritual nature to enter or be

Human Sonship by Nature and by Grace. 307
taken Into such a participation In the divine nature
and life as to become son of God. The New Testa
ment point of view is that sonship in this sense is not
natural but to be acquired. In our Lord himself In
whom it is first humanly realized it does' not result
from the fact of his human nature but from the act
of his human life. He as man made humanity son
of God.
There Is Indeed a sense in which even man may be
caUed son of God by nature. If God is the father of
spirits and finite spirits are not mere products of
nature but children of God there is a natural and es
sential kinship or sonship of every human soul to God.
But It Is evident that though this be so and be pre
supposed, the point of view of the New Testament
is at most that this is only a potential sonship and
has to be actualized In the case of every individual
soul by an act of divine grace on one side and of
human faith on the other. As a matter of fact It may
be correct to say that the grace and faith In each case
only condition and bring to actuality an already ex
istent sonship. But as a matter of actual usage the
language of the New Testament is that the grace and
the faith originate and constitute the sonship. They
have made humanity in Christ son of God and they
enable every human being in Christ to become son
of God. The sonship is not by generation but by
regeneration. Man Is indeed constituted by his na
ture to become son of God but he becomes so only
by an act of the personal Godhead and of his own
personal manhood. To as many as receive him does
the Son of God give power to become sons of God.

3o8 The Ecumenical Councils,
There Is however no real contradiction between those
who contend that the act of grace and faith only
brings to actuality the fact of sonship and those who
contend that It creates it If each will but recognize
the difference of point of view and of the sense in
which terms are used. Sonship could not be imparted
to one whose nature it was not to be and who was
not therefore potentially already a son, and mere
potential sonship is nothing until It becomes actual.
Without going further Into these questions, the
teaching of St. Paul and we may say that of all the
epistles of the New Testament Is that it is the natural
predestination of human nature to find its complement
and completion In a participation in the divine nature,
human life in the divine life. And this vtoOeaia was
to be attained "through Jesus Christ" (Eph. I. 5).
In the man Christ Jesus humanity attained the adop
tion of sons, was made and became son of God.
Similarly in Romans viii. 29 : in the divine fore
knowledge men are predestinated to be conformed to
the image of God's Son, who is thus to be " first-be
gotten or first-born among many brethren." Here
we do not wish to deny that the Son spoken of is
vibg Idtog, the divine and eternal personal archetype in
heaven of aU human sonship upon earth. But that he
was " first-born among many brethren," when taken
in connection with the general analogy of the New
Testament teaching, can only mean that our Lord as
man first realized in his humanity that divine Sonship
into participation In which he was to bring many
brethren. Thus he who was In his deity essential or
proper Son of God in his humanity was constituted

Appeal to Scripture. 309
or became through his holy obedience and self-sacri
fice Son of God by grace and adoption. He was
(Rom. i. 3) Kara nvev\ia dyiuavvT]g, through his offering
of himself by the eternal Spirit without spot to God,
constituted and instituted Son of God in power by his
resurrection from the dead.
The whole argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews
illustrates this truth. The essential and eternal Son-
ship, It can easily be proved, is everywhere presup
posed, but the Sonship actually treated of is that
human one first realized In the person of the man
Christ Jesus. He who was before all things and by
whom aU things exist and consist was as man, through
self-fulfilment in nature and grace, to become heir of
all things, to be himself the crown of his own creation
(i. 2). When he had in our nature made purgation
of our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Maj
esty on high, having lifted humanity in his person to
Its destiny above the angels (I. 3). We see not yet
humanity as a whole but we do see it already In him
through death crowned with glory and honor. It
was necessary that God in bringing many sons to
glory should first perfect the great leader and captain
of their salvarion through suffering. Already in him
has humanity been sanctified through the destruction
of sin and death and him who through these had had
the dominion over It (Ii. 8, etc.). We are partakers
with Christ in all that he has wrought and become for
us if we hold fast our faith In him (iii. 14). We have
not in him one unlike or incapable of sympathizing
with us, but one who tempted in all points like as we
are was yet without sin (iv. 14). Having learned

3IO l^he Ecumenical Councils.

obedience by the things he suffered and having been
himself perfected he became the author of the eternal
salvarion of us all (v. 9). Thus he as our forerunner
has entered for us within the veil. He has brought
us in him Into unity with the divine nature and life
(vi. 20). The law made men high priests who were
StiU sinful and imperfect but the true high priest of
humanity Is vibg hg rbv dtuiva TeTeXet(^p,ivog, one who
has been perfected forever as Son or who has attained
and entered Into a forever perfected and complete
relation of Sonship to God (vii. 28). We might go
thus through every chapter and show how Jesus
Christ was not only the perfect divine grace but also
the perfect human faith and obedience which together
constitute the vioOeaia, the human sonship of which
as man he was the author.
Such a Sonship by grace the Adoptionists predicated
of our Lord In his humanity without at all impugning
the proper and essential Sonship of his divinity. It
is questioned by some who would Impute obscurity
and uncertainty to their views whether they meant
to associate the divine adoption of humanity in Christ
with his birth, baptism or resurrection. Their mean
ing Is clear enough and Is true.
In the first place it was just the true principle at the
root of the whole movement that the change wrought
In humanity by the incarnation was not the immediate,
physical and necessary result of the assumption but
the free, spiritual and personal result of an adoption.
Humanity became son of God not by the mere fact,
ipso facto, of God becoming man but by the conse
quent and complementary act of man becoming

Sonship and the Restirrection. 311
partaker of the nature and Hfe of God. The human
sonship represented by Jesus Christ was not by fact
of his deity alone but by act of his humanity also.
It was therefore not the result of the mere birth of
deity into humanity.
In the second place there are stronger appearances
of an Adoptlonist connection of our Lord's adoption
or becoming Son of God with his baptism. In an
outward way we may say that he became Son of God
not by the physical act of being born but by the
spiritual act of being baptized and fiUed with the Holy
Ghost. In this way he is not physIcaUy but spIrituaUy
Son of God. We know that at his baptism the
heavens were opened, the Holy Ghost descended
upon him, and in that fulness of the Spirit which was
his anointing and constituted him the Christ the voice
of the Father proclaimed him the beloved Son In
whom he was well pleased. There was a profound
truth In this. In that it represents the Sonship as not
natural and necessary but spiritual and free.
But In the third place the human sonship attained
for us by our Lord Is as Httle in aU Its reality consri-
tuted by his anointing with the Holy Ghost as it was
by his birth Into the worid. Both of these were
precedent condlrions but In Itself It consisted In the
spiritual act by which In consequence of them hu
manity became actually something new and divine.
By such an act of his whole Hfe as truly and com
pletely human as it was divine, finished upon Calvary
and consummated and crowned at the right hand of
God, he was himself constituted and constituted hu
manity in himself Son of God. This act was in and

312 The Ecumenical Councils.
of itself a literal and real atonement or reconciUation,
redemption and resurrection of us aU. As In Adam
all were dead so in Christ all were risen. He de
stroyed death and brought life and Immortality to
light as previously he had in the likeness of our sinful
flesh condemned and destroyed sin In our flesh and
raised the spirit in us to holiness and God. As he
died to sin and lived to God so we are to account
ourselves through him dead to sin and alive to God.
It was In perfect consistency with such representations
that the Adoptionists dated the realization of the
human sonship to God of which Jesus Christ wa^ the
author not from the act of natural birth and only
symbolicaUy or sacramentally from that of his baptism
with the Holy Ghost but really and finally from the
moment of the resurrection of humanity in his person
from sin and death. In the flesh of the first Adam
our Lord was born of the seed of David but in the
spirit or spiritual manhood of the second Adam Into
which humanity was raised in him he was constituted
and instituted Son of God In power by his resur
rection from the dead (Rom. i. 4).
The truth then of the human becoming Son of God
of our Lord himself in our nature is strictly scriptural.
And it Is just as truly cathohc In the sense that the
true meaning and function of our Lord's humanity in
deity will not come to organic completeness without It.
There was however a limitation in the view of the
Adoptionists that not only prevented success in carry
ing out the truth for which they stood but also brought
them Into a collision with the church as hurtful to it
as It was fatal to them. DweUing upon the personally

Error of Adoptionism. 313
human agency of our Lord In the Ufe and work of the
Incarnation and so upon his true and complete man
hood, they formed to themselves a conception of the
man Christ Jesus as needlessly as it was unwarrant
ably Inadequate. Our Lord was indeed very man,
more truly even because more wholly and completely
man than we ourselves, but that does not mean that
he is only a single or particular human being precisely
In the sense In which one of us Is so. The Nestorians
with all their endeavor had found it Impossible to rise
above that limited notion of our Lord's personal man
hood, and of the Adoptionists It must be confessed
that, however theoretically they might protest to the
contrary, practically they represented him in a manner
difficult to reconcUe with the personal identity of the
human Jesus with the eternal divine Word. They
did not successfully attain the point of seeing how the
personal human Jesus could be himself the personal
divine Logos. Thus they contended that the man
Christ Jesus, he who was son of Mary, son of David,
son of Adam, could not be properly or essentially Son
of God. He could be so called nuncupatlvely by
reason of his identification with the eternal Son or
Logos, but In himself humanly he was Son of man
only and not Son of God. We are told In the Scrip
tures that God was in Christ but not that he was
Christ or that Christ was God. This is very like the
Nestorian explaining away " the Logos became man "
into " the Logos united himself with man or with a
man." On the whole there can be little doubt that
the Adoptlonist representarion of the man Christ Jesus
as a limited and individual human being like one of

314 The Ecumenical Councils,
us did justify the charge of their great antagonist
Alcuin that though they did not mean it their posi
tion led practically to a Nestorian twofold personality
of the Lord.
It would have been Infinitely better if the church
Instead of extirpating Adoptionism for Its incomplete
ness had taken it up and carried It on Into a true
catholic completion. What was needed to do this
was a truer and fuller construction of our Lord's hu
manity than had yet been attained. What the Adop
tionists failed to see needed to be shown, that It was
possible to ascribe to our Lord a true .personal hu
manity that was In Itself also true and proper personal
deity Instead of being only united or associated with It.
In order to appreciate this It is necessary to reflect
upon the peculiar predicates applied and applicable
to our Lord's manhood alone among men. Of whom
else beside him can It be said that he recapitulates
and Includes humanity In himself and is the head of
It? or that he Is not a single and limited human
individual but universal humanity, aU men and every
man ? And let it be specially observed, he not only
possesses the nature of every man but is the person
ahty of every man. Every human being may say
and ought to say " Not I but Christ." The universal
and everlasting relation of every man to the personal
manhood of Jesus Christ at once differentiates him as
man from every other man and that without impairing
In the least the propriety or reality of his manhood.
Let us attempt a construction of what might truly
be caUed our Lord's personal humanity which Instead
of being compeUed with the Adoptionists to deny its

Christ Universal Humanity. 315
proper divinity shall feel itself compelled to Include it.
And we shall appeal not to the scientific definitions
but to the Intuitive faith and practical experience of
the church from the beginning with regard to the
human person of its Lord. The human Christ is the
same to every human soul that knows him or Is so
just In proportion as it knows him really and truly.
He is the same not only " yesterday, to-day and
forever" but also universally or to every actual know
ledge or experience of him.
Now how shall we describe just what our Lord is
In his humanity to every human being? There is in
every finite spirit of man by virtue of his kinship to
the Father of spirits an element and aspect of infini
tude. That is to say, while there Is In him what Is
particular or individual there is that in him also which
is universal. Every one who reflects Is more or less
conscious that every foUy or fault of which he is guUty
is an offence against an absolute standard of wisdom,
righteousness and goodness which is the only true
measure of himself. Sin Is the transgression of the
particular against the universal or absolute in us.
Now Jesus Christ Is the personal human perfection
of every human person. It is the end of every man
to become Christ. When we speak of the inner, truer.
Ideal man that Is In every man we appeal from the
parricular to the universal, from the Umited to the
absolute, from the human to the divine in him. To
say that Christ Is our wisdom is to say that he is our
reason or understanding In its absolute form ; to say
that he Is our righteousness Is to say that he Is the
absolute freedom of our wiUs, our spiritual and moral

3i6 The Ecumenical Councils.
activities ; to say that he is our life Is to say that he
is not only our nature but ourselves raised above
aU Hmltatlon or contradiction of sin and death and
brought Into participation in the absolute and eternal
life of God.
All this Is contained in the single consciousness
which Is distinctive of Christianity, " not I but Christ."
Christ instead of the ego to a man does not mean to
him the loss but the gain of his personality. It means
the substitution for his outer, particular and separate
self of his Inner, universal and divine self. Let any
one reflect upon all that it means to pass out of one's
self into Christ and it will be realized that it is only
that losing which Is the true finding one's self.
We realize that that faculty which we call reason
Is In us both a faculty or organ of the infinite and
itself an Infinite faculty. There Is no limit whatever
to man's possible conception of truth, beauty and
goodness. In the same way there Is no natural limit
to the possibiUty of a true freedom or liberty of the
human will ; there is no perfect freedom for us short
of the Infinite or absolute one of unity with the will
of God. " Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven Is
perfect " is the only limit and measure of our own
wisdom and righteousness. Now as wisdom, true
freedom or righteousness and In general what we may
call character Is an infinite or absolute thing, so that
human personality which is the subject of all these Is
In Itself also an Infinite, eternal and absolute thing.
The French phUosopher Janet has laid down the
principle that in every man we must distinguish be
tween his individuality and his personality. The In-

God the Essence of our Personality. 3 1 7
dividuallty Is that in him which Is particular ; it Is the
accidents that differentiate him from other individuals
of the same genus or species. The personality Is
that in him which Is essential and universal. As the
man loses in individuality through the unity of the
common reason and freedom, especiaUy through that
of the common spirit and life of charity or love, he
gains In personality, so that when every man's person
ality becomes perfect or absolute all men will become
one, and yet so that while each man then shall be all
he will only then also be perfectly himself.
We might say then that as each man's universal or
absolute reason Is the divine reason, his freedom or
righteousness the divine freedom and his character the
divine character, so the absolute personality of every
man, which is compounded of rational consciousness,
moral freedom and spiritual character, is not something
apart from God but is rather God himself personally
realized and fulfilled In us. In this way the divine
Logos and Christ, the divine man who is our Lord,
is eternal and absolute humanity. " Not I but Christ "
does not mean " not I but the Logos or the Second
Person In the Trinity " : It means " not I but my es
sential and true self or personality " which while It is
in the truest sense " I " Is also God.
The conclusions thus reached with regard to our
Lord's personal humanity are drawn inductively not
only from the predicates that are by common consent
appUed to him but also from the actual relations that
all men spiritually bear to him. It is an actual matter
of fact to all those who make experience of It that he
Is our universal and eternal selves. No individual or

3i8 The Ecumenical Councils.
particular man could be that to us, while that he can
be and Is so is with us a matter of spiritual verification
and knowledge. This is in a sense arguing from our
selves to our Lord, from the particular in ourselves
to the general or universal In him, but It is In accord
with the somewhat more a priori speculative conclu
sions of the church. As Christ Is our eternal or divine
scare we his temporal and human image or expression.
It is he who was from the first intended or predestined
to be expressed or to express himself in humanity.
A perfect work of art combines In itself two elements ;
it is not only the perfect material expression of an
idea but it Is also the idea perfectly expressed in the
material. In a much truer and higher sense perfected
manhood is not merely humanity imaging the divine
Logos: it is the Logos himself imaged, embodied,
incarnated in humanity. The essential truth of hu
manity is God himself In it, not some thought or idea
of his as In the case of the human artist but his per
sonal reason, freedom and activity, his wisdom, right
eousness and life freely and personally made and
become those of men. It was thus the nature of the
Logos to become man as It was that of man to be the
incarnation of the Logos. Neither Is changed or
converted from Itself In becoming the other but only
realizes and fulfils itself.
If the Adoptionists could but have seen the personal
humanity of our Lord In this Hght they would not
have felt themselves necessitated to deny even of his
manhood but on the contrary would have been com
pelled to predicate of it with the church a proper and
essential divine Sonship. They would have been able

Fate of Adoptionism. 319
to reconcile the apparently exclusive and incompatible
truths that Jesus Christ was In his humanity both
proper and adoptive Son of God. He was both the
truth to be realized and the human realization of the
truth of man's divine sonship. The Sonship that was
his in his deity became his in his humanity and that
not by the fact in itself of his becoming man nor
yet by the mere fact of his baptism from above with
the fulness of the Holy Ghost but by that spiritual
and moral transformation which by Its grace he ac
tually wrought in humanity through death to sin and
resurrection to God.
Adoptionism however failed to rise to the true
conception of our Lord's manhood. Desiring to see
In him a humanity in all points like ourownitmade him
only a particular and limited human being like our
selves and not that universal and divine man whom
we have endeavored to describe. To the former
could only pertain as they described it a nuncupative
or nominal and not the essential and proper divine
Sonship that belonged to the latter.
In a series of local councils between the years 790
and 800, of which the most notable was that of Frank
fort in 794, Adoptionism was progressively more and
more condemned and reprobated and In a few years
became extinct.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE CHRISTOLOGICAL GOAL.
HE goal of all true Christological thought
is to arrive at such a construction of the
doctrine of the person and work of Jesus
Christ as shaU be (3) cathohc, (2) scrip
tural and (i) true In itself. This assumes
that there Is a person and work of Christ which Is for
Us the objective as It is to be the subjective, absolute
truth of God, the universe and ourselves; that the
elements of that truth were revealed through the facts
of our Lord's human life and are sufficiently contained
in their scriptural representation and interpretation;
and that while the truth of Christ Is In one aspect
absolute It is also in another sense relative to us and
is to find Its ultimate verification in the universal
testimony of human reason and experience. The
Imperfect experience and knowledge of our Lord
which has been attained by his church as representing
the spiritual consciousness and life of humanity is
nevertheless sufficient to have established a certitude
that will never be lost from Its true and inmost mind
and heart, — the certitude that in him is realized and
contained the whole truth of God In his relation to man
320

Christ Truer than our Science of Hifu. 321
and the whole truth of man in his relation to God.
To apprehend and state this scientifically, in terms
that will embrace all the conditions and elements that
enter Into so complex and comprehensive a fact, may
have baffled the speculative or reflective mind of
Christendom. No one mind can simultaneously and
equally appreciate all that Is involved in the whole
truth of the incarnation. The collective mind of the
church which sooner or later excludes what is spirit
ually false and includes what is spiritually true has
not yet and in this world never will wholly compre
hend or express it. But the efforts, errors and cor
rections of the past and the confirmations, agreements
and certitudes that have been attained through them
have at least had the effect of fixing forever the con
viction that however imperfectly it understands there
is yet a perfect truth which It imperfectly understands,
and that if it wiU but be true to that truth it will
continue to grow as It has grown in knowledge and
understanding. There Is such a thing as a catholic
mind ; there are already results that have finally ap
proved themselves and will nevermore be shaken.
Every real individual or concUIar contribution to such
a sum of resuhs has been or wUl sooner or later be
accepted as cathoUc, and additions wiU continue to be
made to the end of time.
But we must carefully discriminate between the fact
of Christ in the worid and the science of Christ in the
worid. The fact of God in Christ reconciling the
worid to himself and men in Christ reconciled to God
and so redeemed from sin and raised out of death has
existed conrinuously from the beginning and wIU

322 The Ecumenical Councils.
continue to the end, right through and despite the
speculative doubts and questionings and even the
practical mistakes and perversions of actual Chris
tianity. The faithlessness of man will not bring to
naught the faith of God. He wUl be true though
every man be a liar. God In one man and one man
in God Is proof of what ought to be the truth of God
in every man and every man in God. And though
there be not even one such man, still God Is true and
Jesus Christ is his truth.
If we would criticise the singularly subtle, strong
and philosophical as well as theological mind of the
Greek world and church of the concUIar period, we
should say that Its primary lack was that of the as
yet undeveloped capacity to apply to Its facts a
proper scientific or Inductive method. It was not of
course that the fathers did not know the Scriptures,
— they were full of their letter, spirit and life, — but
they knew them as the Greeks knew nature, which
was certainly not as modern science knows it. Jesus
Christ Is to be known from the Old and New Testa
ments taken together as science Is to be learned from
nature. It makes no difference that one is to be ap
prehended spirituaUy and the other physically. To
elicit the conception of the one Christ as he reveals
himself in his own words and deeds, as he Is faithfully
portrayed by the synoptics, as he Interiorly manifests
himself to St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John and the other
writers of the New Testament, Is just as much an act
of induction and requires the same training and qual
ities as the process by which the truths, laws and
unity of nature are scientifically determined. As

The Inductive Method. 323
there are a priori and deductive conclusions with re
gard to the natural world that however logical, con
sistent or beautiful In themselves are not drawn from
and consequently are not true to the facts of the
world as it is, so we must say that very much of the
theology and Christology of the fathers Is a priori or
deductive in Its character and Is neither derived from
nor consistent with the full and exact mind of the
Scriptures as a whole. While catholic life was full of
the fact of God in Christ catholic thought was not as
able as it Is now to see Jesus exactly as he is in
himself, as he appeared objectively to the earlier and
subjectively to the later observation and knowledge
of his New Testament witnesses. Before but espe
cially during the concUIar period the divinity of our
Lord shone too brightly for all to be able to see and
appreciate the completeness in Its every detail of his
humanity ; and the earlier and dominant Christology,
constructed wholly from that side, presented some
times a' picture of it as unhke the actual and scrip
tural Jesus as the extremest a priori physical theory
of nature Is to Its actual facts and phenomena. With
whatever prepossession or freedom from prepossession
we undertake it, the effect of an exact spiritual study
of the mind of the New Testament, after that of any
later movement of Christian thought, is surprise and
wondering admiration. It Is as true to the truth of
the spirit as nature Itself Is to natural truth and in
the same way. In the first place it is a unity but a
unity in diversity, and as it requires a whole mind to
see the absolute unity of nature In its Infinite diver
sity so also does It to see the one and whole Christ

324 The Ecumenical Councils.
In his every trait and aspect In the New Testament.
And in the second place while all the materials are
given no induction is made for us from them but It
is left to the spiritual science of humanity to construct
for itself the Christ as it is to physical science to ar
rive for itself at the unity and wholeness of natural
knowledge. In this way we arrive a posteriori at a
sort of natural conviction, that confirms the instinct of
the church, of a divinity in Holy Scripture similar to
that in nature.
With the New Testament, all Christology must
begin with the fact and facts, precisely as they are,
of the human personahty and personal life of Jesus
Christ. The historical Jesus Is human through and
through, and who can wish to limit or be willing not
to sound and experience all the blessed consequences
of that great fact ? Nothing can be truly said on that
side of the truth that one ought not to be glad to
accept. At the same time the Jesus of history Is
humanity raised to the power of God. It is a hu
manity free from sin and alive from death; a hu
manity that has rent from top to bottom the veil of
flesh and entered in the spirit into the holy of holies
of the divine nature and life. Humanity as our Lord
received It was not what it is as he has made it. His
conquest in It of sin and death, his own human death
to sin and Hfe to God have constituted it at least ac
tuaUy what it was before only potentially, son of God
through personal participation In the divine nature,
character and life. AU this in him was strictly a
human act and was only what it was the nature and
destination of humanity In and through him to do and

Christ the Way to God. 325
become. It is what Is meant by man's eternal pre
destination to VtoOeaia or the adoption of sons through
Jesus Christ unto God. Our Lord became Son of
God through the process, his whole human life of love
and self-sacrifice was itself indeed the process, by
which alone humanity becomes or can become son of
God. He Is the way; no man comes to the Father
but by him. And the new and living way he has
opened Is through his flesh, through that supreme
conquest and crucifixion of his flesh In which he by
the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God.
He Is the dpxrjybg Kal TeXstGirrig, the human author and
perfecter of that faith, obedience and self-sacrifice by
means of which as symbolized by his cross man be
comes his own divine and spiritual instead of his only
natural and carnal self. Thus atonement, redemption
and resurrection are all processes wrought In human
ity bringing it back to God, hoUness and life, and
they were all wrought out in and through the human
Hfe, death and life again out of death of our Lord
Jesus Christ. Thus Jesus Christ as man Is not only
vibg Berbg, he Is the very vtoOeaia of humanity. Hu
man sonship to God in its actuality at least as dis
tinguished from its potentiality was constituted and
consummated by his human life, death and resurrec
tion ; he became and was Instated Son of God with
power according to the spirit of holiness out of and
through his resurrection from the dead.
Recognizing thus as a matter of fact the essential
and complete humanity of our Lord the Adoptionists,
as we saw, thought it a contradiction and neutraliza
tion of It to say that Jesus Christ, our Lord In his

326 The Ecumenical Councils.
humanity, as man, was proper or essential Son of God.
As divine, they said, as eternal Logos he is vibg idiog
but as man he Is vibg Oerbg. Thus they were in danger
of thinking and representing two sonships and sons
in our Lord, both of course personal, which would
make him two persons. But now let us think for a
moment of just this human Sonship and personahty of
our Lord. The most characteristic fact in the New
Testament, next after the truth of our Lord's essential
and complete humanity. Is Its peculiar position and
relation to all the rest of humanity. There can be
no question that our Lord felt himself to be something
as man to every man, the truth, righteousness and Ufe
of all men. Why should he bid us aU : " In the world
ye shall have tribulation : but be of good cheer ; I have
overcome the world " ? Why should aU men be bap
tized into him ? Why Is It the end of every man to
be not himself but Christ ? Why Is he nearer to every
man than himself — the inner man within the outer
men that we are ? We have already suggested the
answer. Jesus Christ not only assumed the common
nature of us all but Is also the common or universal
personality of aU of us. He is the universal reason
or wisdom, the universal will or freedom and right
eousness, and so the universal personality of every
finite person In the world. The end of man to God-
ward is to become God so far as his nature quaUfies
and predestinates him to become partaker of the
divine nature and life, and this he has done in the
person of Jesus Christ, who is not only the Head but
the life also of the whole body of spiritual humanity.
This we say every man has done so far as he is po-

The Proper Deity of the Human Jesus. 327

tentially in Christ ; this every man does so far as he
realizes that he Is no longer himself but Christ, no
longer his individual and particular but his universal
and divine self.
But If It is the end of man to Godward to become
God, that is because It is the end of God to manward
to become man. The divine Logos is the Logos of
God and of all things, not only of man. But in so
far as he Is the Logos of man, so far as he is that
which or he who is to be expressed in man, his pre
destination could not have been otherwise fulfilled
than In what we know as the incarnation. The dif
ference between Jesus Christ and other men Is that
while he is universal or divine humanity incarnate in
a particular man, they in him are particular men who
have realized or attained their universal and divine
manhood through him. Our Lord was a particular
man and as such everything may be predicated of him
that Is proper to man, more than can be predicated of
any other man because he alone has realized all the
potentialities of manhood. Our Lord was also univer
sal humanity and so every human being may predi
cate of himself and reaUze In himself all that is true
of him ; he may In Christ be not himself but Christ.
Why then should we hesitate as the Adoptionists
did to caU even the human Jesus not only adopted
but also essential and proper Son of God? It was
because In their vindication of his particular manhood
and his adopted Sonship they lost sight too far of his
universal manhood and In that of his essential divine
Sonship. If they had seen that more clearly and fully
they would have been more willing to caU even the

328 The Ecumenical Councils.
human Christ proper as well as adopted Son of God.
As against Nestorians and Adoptionists we affirm that
the Logos became man and then as man became Son
of God, — and that neither by conversion of deity into
humanity nor of humanity into deity. For it was the
nature and self-fulfilment of the Logos to become man
and of man through him to become partakef of the
divine nature and life, which is to become son of God.
Each did not cease to be but truly became himself
through the act of the other.
In discovering the truth it is necessary to proceed
from outward facts to inward principles, but In stating
it we may reverse the order, and we have now arrived
at a point where we may sum up the conclusions of
the cathoUc doctrine of the person of our Lord, re
viewing It from within outward. The Trinitarian
discussion terminated with the assertion of living
relations and movements within the nature of the
Godhead. It affirmed an Interior and essential func
tion of the Logos In the personal life of God himself.
But he who is Logos of God Is Logos of aU else ; he
exerts a cosmlcal function as reason, wiU and energy
of the whole creation. All things come into being
through him ; and without him, apart from or outside
of him, nothing is that is. He Is the rational or ideal
worid of which all things are but outward appearances
or phenomena. Whatever there is rational or free,
spiritual or moral — in a word, personal — In the uni
verse Is he. Whatever is not is at least symbol, sen
sible expression or (j)atvbp.evov of hlni. The only thing
in the universe that in its inner essence or universal
form Is not he is the possible and actual free activity

The Logos the True Personality of Men. 329
of finite personal spirits that are made to be free
images of himself, of his personality, but that are free
also to distort and destroy that Image. The only
thing In the world that Is not in a sense God is sin.
Further, the Logos of God and the cosmos is the
Logos of man. That Is of man not as mere product
and part of nature but as spiritual and personal son
of God. Every man who so realizes and becomes
himself does so in him and does so as the result of a
double act, — an act of the divine personality becoming
the man and another of the man becoming not him
self but Christ — forsaking his particular, that is, for
his universal and divine personality. So every man
is predestined to incarnate the Logos as the Logos to
Incarnate himself in every man.
Now we must remember that the incarnation is part
of a universal process. It Is the nature of him who
Is the universal reason and principle of things to be
the mediator, the bond of union or element of unity
between God and things. He is God in the universe
and the universe In God. The universe In fulfilling
him fulfils both God and itself. As he was the be
ginning so he is to be the end In which or whom all
things will return to God and he and they shall be
one. This however becomes plainest when we limit
it to the Incarnation Itself. The very essence and
truth of the Incarnation is its both-sidedness. What
we might call the generic incarnation Is the whole act
in the history and destination of humanity, as of every
man, by which God personally fulfils himself In It and
It fulfils Itself In God. Then aU men will be Christ,
wiU be taken up Into the universal divine personal

330 The Ecumenical Councils.
humanity of Christ and all will be one, losing In In
dividual differences aU they have gained in personal
comprehension and agreement. Now the meaning
and truth to be reaUzed in the generic Incarnation
must have been realized in what we might call the
particular Incarnation of our Lord. We see not yet
man but we see Jesus, exalted and crowned with glory
and honor ; we see the process revealed in him which
Is to be realized in us. And what is of most conse
quence in what is revealed in him is not how God may
be human but how man may become divine. The
former is God's part which we may safely leave to
him, the latter is ours and it behooves us to know and
perform it. What we need to know is how God in
leading many sons to glory first made the great hu
man captain and exemplar of our salvation perfect
through suffering. We learn in him " the way " in
which men become sons of God; the new and living
way that he has opened and consecrated for us through
the rent veil of the flesh into the holy of hoUes of the
spirit. One thing by true inner instinct the church
through all the aberrations of its outward science al
ways kept faithfully, and that was the general assertion
of the very manhood equally with the very Godhead
of our Lord. The Christological meaning and value
of this Is the double truth of the incarnation, accord
ing to which on the one hand God becomes man
without ceasing to be himself and on the other hand
equally man becomes God or one with God without
In any faculty or function ceasing to be himself. The
incarnation being the true and In the higher sense
natural and predestined unity of God and man must

The Kenosis. 331

necessarily be equaUy God graciously fulfiUIng himself
in humanity and humanity through faith, obedience
and self-sacrificing love fulfilling God in Itself and
Itself In God. Therefore in what we have called the
particular incarnation we see in our Lord first in all
that it can possibly mean the Logos become man,
and secondly a man who in the way of man and as
the very truth and revelation of the way of man be
comes God or Son of God. With regard to this man
we can only repeat what we have said of him, that
he In no wise differs from other men save that he is
the universal and the divine become particular and
human while we who are particular and human be
come in him universal and divine, or In other words
he Is primarily divine and secondarily human while
we are primarily human and secondarily and only in
him divine. He Is both proper and adopted Son of
God while we are only adopted and not proper sons
of God.
It wiU help us In following out the bearings and
consequences of the incarnation to remember that
when we speak or think of It as a self-emptying,
contracting or humbUng of the Godhead, we are
thinking of God only In his physical, not his spiritual,
moral and truly personal qualities. God Uke man
and man like God Is greatest and most himself as love.
All his natural or physical properties, as his omnis
cience or his omnipotence, are but the servants of
that central quality which Is himself. Our human
Lord was greatest and most himself when In weak
ness and shame he was led as a sheep to the slaughter
and, as a lamb before her shearers is dumb, opened

332 The Ecumenical Councils.
not his mouth. And God In aU his relations to us
In this Infinite universe of wisdom and power Is most
God, most divine and most great in the mystery of
his grace toward us in the person of Jesus Christ.
The incarnation and the cross are God not at his
lowest but at his highest.
Again we need to remember that the incarnation
is an incarnation not of the physical properties but
of the spiritual, moral and strictly personal quahties
of God. It is God in man In the sense and manner
in which it was the nature of God and man to be one
In the other. It was not the nature of man to share
the natural or physical but only the spiritual and
personal quaHties of God. " Be ye perfect as your
Father in heaven is perfect " does not mean, be om
niscient or omnipotent. It means, love as God, give
and forgive as God, die for one another as God has
died for you, have the character and live the life of
God, be your divine and not your earthly, sensual,
devilish self. When our Lord said " He that hath
seen me hath seen the Father " he did not mean that
we had seen In him the divine omnipotence or omnis
cience. We saw something better and higher than
that, even the divine love that Is not any property of
God but God himself, and that we saw raised to Its
highest power in the incarnation and the cross. That
can be in man and was In man and only makes him
infinitely more man. But omniscience or omnipotence
cannot be in him and he remain man. All the per
sonal, spiritual, moral qualities can incarnate them
selves but the physical or natural properties of God
cannot be incarnate because It Is not the nature or

Incarnation Spiritual not Physical. 333
within the potentiality of man to contain or possess
them. An omnipotent or omniscient man Is an Im
possibUity. The spirit, character and life of God In
us will indeed expand indefinitely our human faculty
for knowledge and our huraan power of action but
they will always remain human. It is not that In us
which becoraes divine in Christ. What does so be
corae is our spiritual and personal qualities, not our
physical or natural properties. And vice versa what
of God becoraes huraan in us Is his spiritual, not his
physical attributes, his love, not his knowledge or his
power. If Jesus Christ then is what we might call the nat
ural truth of the Incarnation, we see God in him
spiritually and not physically. His love is God, his
holiness is God, his character and life are God, but
then they are all equally man. Just those things
were Incarnate In him that could become man, not
those that could not. The Logos was Incarnate in
him just in the way and to the extent in which It was
the nature and the purpose of the Logos to be Incar
nate in man. It is absurd therefore to speak of the
omniscience or omnipotence of our incarnate Lord as
though they were a part of the incarnation. Even
now In his ascended and exalted humanity, however
our Lord might and does " share in " the omniscience
and omnipotence of the Logos, he is not humanly
omniscient or omnipotent, and he certainly was not
so on earth before the completion and exaltation of
his human faculties and powers.
With regard to the modes In which Christian
thought has tried to conceive and represent the " be-

334 The Ecumenical Councils.

coming-man " of God, those are without question to
be finally rejected which are based upon the principle
of an absolute self-depotentiation of the Logos. It
is Impossible to entertain the idea of any suspension
of those functions of the eternal second person of the
Trinity which are a part of the Internal and essential
life of God. It Is equally impossible to think of any
interruption of the cosmic functions of the eternal
reason, will and energy of the universe. Yet we may
and must think of that same mind, wUl and heart of
God made flesh in Christ, crucified for us upon Cal
vary, and become the Inner personality and divine
self of every man who can say " Not I but he!"
Since the revelation and experience of that truth in
the person of Jesus Christ the human soul can never
again be satisfied with anything less either for itself
or frora God. His nature as well as ours requires
that It should complete itself, at least to usward, in
that lowest act which is also its highest. God like us
only truly finds himself as he has truly lost himself
In love. It is he then who Is in God and is God,
who Is In the cosmos and is its living principle and
essential life, who Is also our Incarnate Lord. He is
one and the same in all, and yet assuredly the Logos
in the man and humanity is not the Logos as he Is In
God or the cosmos. Neither does he in his Incarna
tion discharge those larger functions nor does his In
carnation suspend or interrupt them. We can only
say that he so far only incarnates himself or becomes
man as It Is the meaning and end of the incarnation
that he should do so. And It would not only be an
Impossibility and a contradiction In Itself but would

Theory of Self-depotentiation. 335
wholly annul the whole truth and value of the incar
nation If the deity of our Lord should Import Into the
human faculties and functions of his manhood natural
properties and powers which not only do not belong
to It but which would neutralize It or convert It Into
something else. God can spiritually and ethically
become man and thereby only fulfil and exalt the
manhood because the spiritual and ethical nature of
God and man are the same ; man as well as God Is
essentially spirit, truth and love. But God cannot
physically become man or man God because the
physical properties and characteristics of deity and
humanity are inconvertible. Therefore we say that
in all spiritual qualities, faculties and functions the
Logos was so man that the man was also the Logos.
It was the nature and distinction of the Logos, hisfunc-
tlon to manward, to be the universal personal truth of
every man as every man is the particular personal
truth or image of him. But the physical natures,
properties and functions of our Lord reraain forever
two. Omniscience and omnipotence no more pertain
to him as raan than bodily parts and functions belong
to him as God. They may be intimately conjoined,
now especially In pur Lord's exaltation the humanity
may in hira In some way above our comprehension
" share " the omniscience, omnipotence and even ora-
nlpresence of his deity. But the huraan Jesus was
raan ; no raan saw God In hira save as Godhead raay
be expressed In manhood, as God and man are capable
of being one. He loved as God ; so far as his death
was the act of his love he died as God ; but he ate,
slept, walked as man and so far as his knowledge was

336 The Ecumenical Councils.
natural knowledge and his acts produced physical
effects he knew as man and acted as man. That does
not mean that he had not supernatural knowledge
and did not work miracles but that even In these he
was man and both knew and worked as man. And
he himself affirms, " Verily, verily, I say unto you. He
that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he
do also, and greater works than these shall he do."
It may not be possible for us to explain how the omnis
cient, omnipotent and omnipresent Logos entered
personally into humanity without bringing with him
into it all these properties but we have not to give a
natural explanation of the mystery of the incarnation.
To say that the Logos became man Is in Itself to say
that the Infinite entered into limitations. Omnis
cience, omnipotence and omnipresence cannot so enter
but Love can. They would be diminished and anni
hilated by It but he Is only magnified and fulfilled by
It. Whatever self- emptyings or humiUations were
involved in the incarnation we know only enough
about them to know that they are to the greatness
and glory of that In God which makes him most him
self. Our incarnate Lord Is personal God, personal
love, personal holiness, truth and life. It is not only
that he has shared our nature and Imparts his to us ;
he takes not ours but ourselves and gives us himself,
not merely his. St. Paul does not say " Not my na
ture but Christ's " but " Not I but Christ ! " In every
raan the eternal Logos finds and becomes himself, as
every man for the first time truly finds and becoraes
himself in him.
With regard to the other theory which discarding

Theory of Progressive Incarnation. 2)'h1
the notion of an absolute self-depotentiation of the
Logos or of any Hmltatlon or contraction In himself
holds to a gradual or progressive incarnation or self-
communication of the Logos to humanity, this rauch
in it at least raay win our sympathy and Interest. In
the first place Its motive is to provide for what is an
indispensable necessity to the truth and purpose of
the Incarnation, a true human development in every
respect of our Lord's humanity from its conception
to its exaltation. But secondly and even more its
aim is to provide for a spiritual and moral in distinc
tion frora a raerely physical and necessary incarnation.
The Logos is incarnate in the whole Christ and pre
eminently In a human spirit and life and not merely
a huraan flesh or nature. The character of Jesus, the
fact of his human hoUness frora sin and human life
out of death. Is Infinitely more the incarnation than
the actuality of his natural flesh and blood. In fact
his natural manhood is only the condition, not the
essence or reality of the incarnation. He became
raan aap\u, In the flesh, In order that he might as man
become the incarnation of God ¦nvivp.art, in the spirit.
In a word it is spiritual and not natural manhood in
Jesus Christ that Is the true and completed Incarnation.
However difficult It Is for us to conceive or represent
both sides of such a double truth. It Is necessary for
us to see In our Lord not only the Logos personally
present and expressed In manhood but also a man
hood which by the spiritual and personal act of Its
whole life Incarnates and expresses the Logos. This
requires an extension of the act of incarnation over
the whole human life of our Lord and makes only the

S3^ The Ecumenical Councils,
resurrection and ascension the completion and con
summation of it.
The general result of the foregoing reflections Is to
bring us to the following conclusion with regard to
the unity of our Lord's person in the duality of his
divine and human natures. To begin with we must
discriminate between physical and spiritual natures
both in God and ourselves. In spiritual or personal
nature there is no essential difference or mutual ex
clusion between God and man. The sarae love that
is the nature of God is the nature of raan ; the divine
reason, will and character may become ours also and
must become ours if we are truly to becorae ourselves.
He is our only holiness, righteousness and life.
Yet while there is no spiritual difference In kind
there is an infinite physical or natural difference be
tween God and us that can never be transcended.
The physical or natural properties and qualities of
God can never become man's or those of raan God's.
In the nature of things the Logos cannot cease to be
nor can huraanity become omnipresent, omnipotent
or omniscient. Our Incarnate Lord then is personal
Godhead and personal manhood In the unity and
totahty of that spiritual nature in which It is their
constitution and predestination to become one. But
physically or naturally Godhead and manhood do not
becorae one and the sarae in him. The Logos remains
omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient, the man
hood never acquires any of these divine properties.
Even now In his exaltation our Lord as huraan In
some Ineffable way may and must "share " or "par
ticipate in " the omnipresence and omniscience of the

Soteriology Dependent on Christology. 339
Logos but he is not humanly omnipresent or omnis
cient. And the time Is past when we can ascribe to
the humanly developing and incomplete manhood of
our Lord on earth any act of Immediate and non-
human omnipotence or omniscience. Though the
catholic doctors did not always mean It, the catholic
doctrine of the distinctness of the natures in the unity
of the person meant that the physical properties of
one nature did not pass over Intq the other nature.
Against this fundamental truth the great Leo himself
and many able theologians then and now offend when
they represent the huraan Jesus as now raanifesting
the properties of man and now those of God. On
the contrary what consciousness our Lord more and
more acquired of even his own higher and eternal
nature and preexistence came to him humanly through
his own spiritual Intuitions and revelations to hira frora
the Father, as in a lower way we come to know our
sonship to God partly through instinct born of the
fact that we are sons and partly through self-revela
tions to us from God. Our interest in this view Is
only secondarily that from a scientific point of view
It Is the true and only possible one. It is very much
more that from the religious point of view It Is the
only one that is consistent with a true Incarnation
and with a true view of the meaning, operation and
results of the incarnation. In no other way does God
really fulfil himself in man and man in God, as is first
the case for us In the divine and the human person
of our Lord.
The most serious criticism of the practically pre
dominant tendency of patristic and stIU more of later

340 The Ecumenical Councils.

Christological thought Is that a one-sided view of our
Lord's person led to a much more one-sided view of
his work. A Christology In which the human is un
duly subordinated to the divine leads to a soteriology
in which the human part is stUl more unduly lost in
the divine. In the dominant theology every distinc
tive term descriptive of huraan salvation has come to
be interpreted^ almost wholly as an act of God and
hardly at aU as an act even In man, much less of man.
Thus for example with regard to the acts which we
designate atonement and redemption it might almost
be said that If God could In himself and without be
coming man at all have died instead of men It would
have answered all the purposes of the popular theol
ogy as an expiation from the guilt and a deliverance
from the penalty of our sins. The human nature was
only assuraed as that in which it should be possible
for God so to suffer for or instead of us. Or at the
most, from that point of view, it would be that the
Godhead became incarnate in the likeness of our sinful
flesh in order that there might be the likeness of a
condemnation of sin in the flesh, or In other words a
representation of man's dying, for and from his sins
and being made alive to God. Of course atonement
and redemption are acts of God but they are real for
us only as they are acts performed In man and not
outside of him. If the essence of the atonement is
found where it lies, in the fact that humanity taken
Into God itself dies to and from the sin that separates
It frora hira and Hves In the holiness in which it Is one
with him, we shall see at once that the atonement
could not have been an act of God performed for

The Sum of Spiritual Science 341
humanity externally because It Is essentially an act
performed for humanity Internally. God's atoneraent
is our reconciliation and reunion with him; his re
demption is our freedom from sin and death. The
atonement was accomplished when humanity in Jesus
Christ was made one with God by the spiritual and
moral act of the cross ; the redemption was finished
when in him men overcame sin and destroyed death.
The whole spiritual science of the New Testament is
to show us in Jesus Christ how the divine humanity
was realized for us and is to be realized In and by us.
Our Lord himself expressed it in that one word, the
cross ; the cross which is the eternal symbol of self-
sacrificing love; love, in which God lost and found
himself In us and In which we lose and find ourselves
In God.

INDEX.

Acacius of Beroea, 230, 231.
Acacius of Constantinople, 272,
excommunicated, 272, 273.
Adoptionism, 60, rejection, 68,
301 sq.. New Testament basis,
306 sq., truth, 310, limitations,
312 sq., similarity to Nestorian
ism, 313, 314, catholic view,
314 sq., 326 sq., error recapitu
lated, 325 sq.
" JEons," 62, 70.
Aetius, 159.
Agatho, 297.
Alcuin, 314.
Alexander, bishop of Alexandria,
59, 91, 95, letter from Con
stantine, III, 116, 117, at
Nicffia, 124, 141, death, 151.
Alexander of Hierapolis, 232,
imperial pressure, 238.
Alexandria, in early centuries, 60
sq. See Greek Thought.
Alexandria, Council of, under
Athanasius, 157.
Alexandria, school of, stand for
divinity of Christ, 192, 198, 202,
217; support of Rome, 246.
Alexandria, see of, letter from
Constantine, 133.
"All, always, everywhere,'' 44,
45-
Anastasius, 213.
Anastasius, Emperor, 273.
Anatolius, 250.
Anomoeans, 159.
"Anthropotocos," 211.
Antioch, Council of, repudiates use

of word "homoousion," 144,
153. 154-
Antioch, Council of, under John,
229.
Antioch, patriarchate, 95.
Antioch, school of, 58, 116, stand
for human aspect of Christ, 192,
202 sq., 217, against Cyril, 227
sq., 231 sq., 23s sq.
Antioch, synods of, condemn Ebi
onism, 57.
ApoUinaris, Apollinarianism, 66,
67, rejected, 68, 69, 177, 180
sq., Docetism, 188 sq., catholic
view, per contra, 189 sq., rela
tions to Arianism and Nestorian
ism, 192, 201, opposes dualism,
193, catholic view, 194, fore
runner of Monophysitism, 195.
Arians, Arianism, 58, connection
with Samosatenism, 59, with Nes
torianism, 59, 60, condemned,
68, 70 ; difference from other
heresies, 90, 91, not Christolog
ical but theological, 95 sq.,
tenets, 96 sq., true value nega
tive, TOO, catholic doctrine, 100
sq., relations to Constantine, 105,
relations of conservatives to,
141, 142, after Nicene Council,
148 sq., charges against Atha
nasius, 151, under Constantius,
etc., 153 sq., character of doc
trine, 158 sq., 168, dissolution,
171 sq., expulsion uuder Nes
torius, 213.
Ariminum, Council of, 156.

343

344

Index.

Aristotle, definition of "rational,"
34-
Arius, 58, 91, 95, letter to Euse
bius, 96, position, 96 sq., letter
from Constantine, ill, 116, re
lations to Constantine, 112, his
following, 119, at Nicaaa, 119,
120, contrasted with Athana
sius, 124, character, 125, ban
ished, 132, restored, 150, pro
nounced orthodox, 152, death,
152. See Arians.
Aries, Council of, 1 12, 114, 155.
Artemas, 59.
Artemon, 56, 57, 71, 91.
" Aseity," 102, 299.
Athanasius, 92, 95, relation to
Constantine, 112, IIJ, life and
character, 123 sq., regrets ne
cessity of definitions, 129, argu
ment at Nicsea, 131 sq., after
Nicaea, 139 sq., vs. Eusebius,
142, disobeys summons of em
peror, 142, estimate of homo
ousion, 145 sq., attacks of
Arians, 149, 150, banished,
150, 152, succeeds to patri
archate of Alexandria, 151,
charges against, 151; in various
councils, 152, restored to see,
153, second banishment, 153,
declared innocent at Rome, 154,
at Sardica, 154; return, 155,
condemnation at Aries and
Milan, 155, romance of career,
156, banished by Julian, 157,
restored by Jovian, 157, Coun
cil of Alexandria, 157, subse
quent life, 158, policy toward
Semi- Arians, 159, 160, at Sec
ond General Council, 163 sq.,
teaches "natural unity" of di
vine and human in Christ, 196,
silence in regard to analysis of
Christ's humanity, 204.
Atonement, 37, according to Cyril,
237, true view, 294, 325, 340,
341-
Attila, 248.

Augustine, 114, 176.
Aurelius, Marcus, 5.
Baptism, i65.
Basil, 163, 164, 173, quoted, 175,
176.
"Begotten," 103, 104.
Callistus, 71.
Canon of Scripture, 25-27.
Carthage, 12.
Catholic truth, 40 sq., in infant
chnrch, 48, 49. See Church.
Celestine, 220, 221, 231.
Chalcedon, Council of. See Fourth
General Council.
Chalcedonian Decrees, 253, 255 ;
confirmed, 270.
Christ, the Logos of all creation,
83, universality of his human
ity, 82 sq. See ApoUinaris,
Christology.
Christianity, what it is, 26, double
problem involved, 30 sq., full
claim concerning Christ, 35 sq.,
vs. Gnosticism, 62 sq., averse
to speculation, 79, state reli
gion, 134 sq., course between
Arianism and Sabellianism, 168
sq., essential principle, 172,
two aspects, 199. See Chris
tology.
Christology, of the New Testa
ment, 1 sq. , moral and religious
ideal primarily in Christ, not in
his teaching, 5, 6, Christ more
than ideal of humanity, 7, 8, n
sq., his relation to Old Testa
ment, 8 sq., agreement of syn
optics with St. John, 14, 15, 22
sq., complete union of divine
and human, 15 sq., depth of
question, 69 sq. , universality of
his humanity, 82, the Logos of
all creation, 83, after Nicean
Council, 124 sq., 180 sq., full
doctrine regarding Christ's hu
manity, 182 sq., relation of Nes
torianism to, 202 sq., "Tome

Index.

345

of St. Leo," 260 sq., goal, 320
sq., general defects of early,
summed up, 322 sq., true in
ductive method, 322, full doc
trine as against Adoptionism,
314 sq., summary, 326 sq., 338
sq. See Adoptionism, Antioch,
Apollinarianism, Christianity,
Councils, Cyril, Docetism, Ebi
onism, Logos, Monophysitism,
Monothelitism, Nestorianism,
etc.
" Christotocos, " 211.
Chrysaphius, 243, 245, 249.
Chrysostom, 210, deacon, 211,
bishop of Constantinople, 211,
characteristics, 212, exile, 212,
215.
Church, catholic, 18, 22, 24, 28,
birthday, 31, authority, 32, in
terpretation of Scriptures, 40 sq.,
relation to councils, 45 , 46, first
Trinitarian, 77 sq. See Adop
tionism, Apollinarianism, Arian
ism, Dualism, Logos, etc.
Clement of Alexandria, 28, 79,
202.
Conservatives, after Nicean Coun
cil, 141 sq.
Constans, 153-155. 293-
Constantia, 149.
Constantine, character, 105 sq.,
letter to Alexander and Arius,
III, 116, Council of Aries, 112,
of Nic^a, 112, 116 sq., relations
to Arius, 112, to Athanasius
and Eusebius, 113, calls Nicean
Council, 114, proposes " homo
ousion," 126, writes to Alex
andria, 133, after Nicean Coun
cil, 138, affected by Eusebius,
etc. , 149, associated with Arians,
150 sq., death, 153.
Constantine II. , 153, 154.
Constantine Pogonatus, 297, 298.
Constantinople, councils of. See
Councils.
Constantius, 109, 153, 155, 156,
death, 156.

Cosmology, and Cosmogony, 61,
62, 167.
Council, First General, Ebionism
condemned, 68, 80; charge
against Arius, 98, 109, 112,
CEdled by Constantine, 114,
work, 114 sq., creed of con
servatives, 121, of Nicsea, 127
sq., result of council, 132, rela
tion to church, 135 sq. , peculiar
value, 135, reaction, 138.
Council, Second General, con
demns Apollinarianism, 67, Do
cetism, 68, 162 sq., value, 170
sq., 177, canon regarding ranks
of bishops of Constantinople
and Rome, 179, 265.
Council, Third General, Ebionism
condemned, 68, issue, 214, at
Ephesus, 223 sq., briberies,
224, confusion, 228.
Council, Fourth General, Ebion
ism condemned, 67, 232, 235,
251 sq., value, 252 sq., Chalce
donian decree, 255, result, 255,
effects disappointing, 256 sq.,
Rome vs. Constantinople, 266.
Council, Fifth General, Ebionism
condemned, 68, 271, 274, 275,
277, 278.
Council, Sixth General, Docetism
condemned, 68, 262, Dorner's
view, 288, why catholic, 289,
297 sq.
Councils, Alexandria, 157. Anti
och, see Antioch. Ariminum,
156. Aries, see Aries. Csesarea,
150,152. Chalcedon, see Coun
cil, Fourth General. Ephesus,
see Council, Third General.
Ephesus, under Dioscorus, 245,
247,248. Frankfort, 319. Jeru
salem, 150, 152. Lateran, 293.
Milan, 155. Nicene, see Coun
cil, First General. Philippopolis,
154. Rimini, 156. Robber, 245,
247, 248. Rome, 154. Sardica,
see Sardica. Tarsus, 229. Tyre,
150, 152.

346

Index.

Councils, Constantinople, First,
see Council, Second General.
Third, see Council, Sixth Gen
eral. Conservative, 150, 152.
Local (a.d. 448), 242, 245.
Councils, the one primary ques
tion at issue, i sq., accident,
not essence, 45, imperial pres
sure, 80, 127.
Creed, of conservatives at Nicaea,
l2i,opposition, 122, 123, Nicean,
127, expansion of, at Constan
tinople, 163 sq., exact nature,
177 sq. , indorsed by Antiochians,
229.
Crispus, 106.
Cyril, 215 sq., 218, treatise, 219,
issue with Nestorius, 219, 220,
correspondence with Celestine,
221, letter to Nestorius, 222,
lack of caution, 222, 227, ad
vantage over Nestorius, 223,
deposed by Antiochians, 228,
vindication, 229, reconciliation
with John, 230, Christological
position, 233 sq., faults, 235
sq., attacks works of Theodore,
239, death and character, 239,
240, contributions to doctrine,
240, synodical letters received
at Chalcedon, 253.
Cyrus of Alexandria, 291, 292,

Decrees, Chalcedonian, 253, 255,
confirmed, 270.
Deism, 167.
Diodorus of Tarsus, 192, 203, 211,
212.
Dionysius, 289.
Dionysius of Alexandria, 92, re
lations to Arians, 93.
Dioscorus, 243 sq., president of
Robber Council, 245, folly, 247,
opposition of Leo, 248, excom
municates Leo, 250, at Chal
cedon, 251, overthrow, 252.
Docetism, 60, 63 sq., rejected, 68,
95, pantheism of, 168, of

ApoUinaris, 188 sq., new forms,
256, 258.
Domnus, 297.
Donatlsts, 112, 118.
Dorner, quoted, 137, 197, 254,
256, 287, 294, 299, 302.
Dualism, "jo, opposed by Apol-
linaris, 193, catholic view,
194.
Easter, 116, 133.
Ebion, 54, 59. See Ebionism.
Ebionism, 50, 54 sq., condemned,
68, 70, not speculative, 79,
source of Arianism, 91, 104,
outcome of wrong use of " homo
ousion," 145, deism, 168, new
forms, 256, 258.
Ebionitic Monarchianism, 'jo. See
Ebionism.
Ecumenical. See Council.
Elipandus, 302.
Elustathius of Antioch, 117.
" EvE/j/Efa," 279, 284.
" Evuffif," 218.
Ephesus, Council of. See Coun
cil, Third General.
Ephesus, Council of, under Dios
corus, 245, 247, 248.
Epictetus, 5.
Essence. See " Ousia."
Eternal generation, loi, 104.
Eunomius, Eunomians, 159.
Eusebius of Cassarea, 1 1 5, 11 7-120,
creed, 121, 126, character, 142,
vs. Athanasius, 142, relations
to Constantine, 149.
Eusebius of Dorylseum, 242, 245,
252.
Eusebius of Nicomedia, 96, 113,
119, 120, relations to Constan
tine, 149, 150, translated to
Constantinople, 153, 156.
Eustathius, 150.
Eustathius of Antioch, 117.
Eutyches, Eutychianism, 67, re
jected, 68, 242, condemned, 243,
253 sq., decision reversed, 245,
appeal to Leo, 246, condemned

Index.

347

and excommunicated at Chalce
don, 252.
Fathers, early, 29.
Felix of Urgellis, 303.
Felix III., 272.
Flavian, 242, 243, 245, 246, leUer
from Leo, 247.
Frankfort, Council of, 319.
Fulgentius Ferrandus, 276.
Genseric, 249.
George of Cappadocia, 153, 156.
Gnosticism, 62, 63, 70.
God, knowledge of, 32 sq.
Golden Church, 153.
Gospel, primitive, 10 sq.
Greek thought and theology, con
trast with Latin, 60, tendency,
64, criticism of, 322, 323.
Gregory of Cappadocia, 155.
Gregory of Nazlanzus, 163, 164,
173. 176-
Gregory of Neo-Csesarea, 92.
Gregory of Nyssa, 163, 164, 173.
" Henoticon," 272.
Heraclius, 290, 292.
" Heteroouslon," 159.
Hilary, Pope, 248.
Hilary of Poictiers, 163, quoted,
174.
Holy Ghost, 178.
" Homolousion," 147, 157, i6o.
' ' Homoousion, " 92, 118, proposed
. by Constantine, 126, 128, 129,
130, 140, objections to, 143 sq.,
estimate of Athanasius, 145 sq.,
163, Six Articles, 234.
Honorius, 292, opposed to Chal
cedon, 293, condemned by Sixth
General Council, 299.
Hormisidas, 274.
Hosius, of Cordova, 116, 117, 118,
126, 156.
" Humanltarianism," revival of
Ebionism, 60.
Hypatia, 216.
Hypostasis, 146, 164, 165, defect

in Leo's teaching, 257 sq. ; 268,
303. 304-
Ibas, works anathematized by Jus
tinian, 275, 277.
Immanence, 73, 74.
Incarnation, 31, 37, diflSculties, 86
sq., position taken at Fourth
General Council, 255, Tome of
St. Leo, 260 sq., part of a uni
versal process, 329, not phys
ical but spiritual, 332. See
Antioch, Apollinarianism, Chris
tology, Cyril, Logos, Nestori
anism, etc.
Inspiration, 32, 39, 40.
Irenaeus, 29, 79, 196, 217.
Janet, quoted, 316.
Jerome, summary of Council of
Rimini, 156.
Jerusalem, church of, 48.
Jerusalem, Council of, 150, 152.
Jesus. See Christ.
John, St., Gospel of, 22 sq. ; vs.
Docetism, 64.
John I., Pope, 274.
John of Antioch, 222, 225, name
attached to letter to Nestorius,
226, delay in reaching Ephesus,
227, after Third General Coun
cil, 229 sq., reconciliation with
Cyril, 230, imperial pressure,
238.
John of Damascus, 268, 299, 302,
3?4-
Jovian, 157-
Judaism, 19, 20, in early church,
49 sq., mission, 51 sq. , influ
ence of, in Samosatenism and
Arianism, 58.
Julian, 107, 125, 156, 157.
Julianists, 280.
Julius, bishop of Rome, 153, 154.
Justin, Emperor, 273.
Justin II. , 278.
Justinian, 273 sq., anathematiza
tions, 275, Fifth General Coun
cil, 277.

348

Index.

Kant, 20.
"Labarum," 109, no.
Lateran Council, 293.
Latrocinium, 245, 247, 248.
Law and gospel, 19, 20.
Leo the Great, 245, judgment on
Eutyches, 246, correspondence
with Flavian and Theodoret,
246, the Tome, 247, 254, anal
ysis of, 260 sq., letters disre
garded by Dioscorus, 260, activ
ity against Dioscorus, 248, great
ness, 248, 249, part InFourthGen-
eral Council, 25 1 sq., intellectual
limitations, 257 sq., supremacy
of Rome, 263, 266, regarded in
East as latent Nestorian, 274.
Leo I., Emperor, 270.
Leo II. , 299.
Libanius, 211.
Liberius of Rome, 156.
Licinius, 105, no.
Logos, 82, sq., Seof, but notifeiif,
88, Arian views, 96 sq., catho
lic doctrine, 100 sq., revealed in
creation, 167, 184 sq. ; Nestorian
views, 204 sq., 218, catholic doc
trine, 317 sq.,325sq. See Adop
tionism, Incarnation, Monoph
ysitism, Monothelitism, etc.
Lucian, 58, 91, 117, 119.
Macedonius, Macedonians, 1 78,
213.
Macrlna, 176.
Magnentius, 155.
Marcellus of Ancyra, 140, 144,
150, pronounced orthodox at
Rome, 154, 168.
Marcian, 250, 252, 253, 263, 264.
Martin I., 293, 297.
Mary. See Theotocos.
Maximian, 224, 229.
Maximus, 287, 288, 293 sq., death,
297, quoted, 306.
Meletian schism, 116, 133.
Memnon, 223, deposed by Anti
ochians, 228.

Milan, Co'uncil of, 155.
Miracles, 13, none in nature, 85.
" Monarchia," 70 sq., 91.
Monarchianism, Ebionitic, 70.
Patripassian, see Patripassian
Monarchianism. Sabellian, see
Sabellian Monarchianism.
Mongus, Peter, 272.
Monica, 176.
Monophysitism, 67, rejected, 68,
195, 196, 269 sq., liturgical ad
ditions, 270, 273, 274, revolt,
274, Fifth General Council,
277, present force, 278, prin
ciples, 278 sq., difficulties, 281
sq., attempted conciliation, 290,
291 ; real cause of revolt, 295.
Monothelitism, 67, rejected, 68,
284 sq., Honorius originator,
292, later popes, 293.
Nature, divine principle in, 84 sq. ,
no miracles in, 85.
Neale, quoted, 58.
Nestorianism, condemned, 68, 192,
201 sq., charges against, 217
sq., summed up, 232 sq., not
dead with Nestorius, 238, 256.
See Nestorius.
Nestorius, 201, personality, 213,
216, 218, attacked by Cyril, 219,
220, letter to Celestine, 220,
condemned at Rome, 221, the
twelve anathematizations, 222,
counter-anathematizations, 222,
weakness, 223, deposed and
banished, 224, 226, 228, letter
from Antioch, 226, firmness,
227, John of Antioch joins in
condemnation, 230, in retire
ment, 231, faith in his inno
cence, 231, 232.
New Testament, 24, 25. See
Christianity.
Newman, " Arians of the Fourth
Century," quoted, 58.
Nicean Council. See Council, First
General.
Noetus, 71.

Index.

349

Nonna, 176.
Novatians, 213.
Old Testament, 8, 10. See
Christianity.
Origen, 79, relation to Arians, 92,
93, IOI, 144, 202.
"Ousia," 94, 127, 129, 146 sq.,
163, 164, not revealed in crea
tion, 167.
Pantheism, 73 sq., 167.
Paschal controversy, 116, 133.
Patripassian Monarchianism, 71
sq., 76, accepts incarnation, 79,
contrasted with Arianism, 91
sq. ; 95, 104; reviewed, 270.
Paul, St., opposition to other
apostles, 17 sq. , 49 ; mission,
21,22; vs. Docetism, 64.
Paul of Constantinople, 153.
Paul of Emesa, 230, 231.
Paul of Samosata, 57 sq., 91, con
demned at Antioch, 144, 145.
Pelagius, 40.
Person, Persona. See Hypostasis.
Peter Mongus, 272.
Peter the Fuller, 270.
Philippopolis, Council of, 154.
Photius, 144.
Pogonatus, Constantine, 297, 298.
Praxeas, 71.
Proclus, 238.
" Prosopon," 165.
Pseudo -Dionysius Areopagitica,
289.
Pulcheria, 249, accession, 250,
253-
Quartodecimans, 213.
Redemption, 37. See Atonement.
Religion and morality identical in
Christ, 6.
Rimini, Council of, 156.
Robber Council, 245, 247, 248.
Rome, Council of, 154.
Rome, supremacy of, 179; sup
ports Alexandria, 246, under

Leo, 263, 264, Chalcedonian
canon, 265.
Sabellian Monarchianism, 71 sq.,
76, accepts incarnation, 79, con
trasted with Arianism, 91 sq.,
95 ; economic Trinity, 104. See
Sabellianism.
Sabellianism, use of homoousion,
144, doctrine, 168. See Sabel
lian Monarchianism.
Sabellius, 71.
Samosatenism, 57, 58, connection
with Arianism, 59.
Sardica, Council of, 154, canon of
regarding supremacy of Rome,
179.
Scriptures. See Canon, Inspira
tion, Christology, Christianity,
etc.
Semi-Arians, 147, 157, 158, 159,
172.
Sergius of Constantinople, 291,
292, 298.
Severians, 280.
Severus, 280.
Six Articles, the, 229, 230, 234.
Sixtus IIL, 231.
Socrates, 60, 64.
Son of God, views of Adoptionism,
305 sq.- See Logos, Incarna
tion, Church, etc.
Sophronius, 291, 292.
Substance, Substantia, 165. See
"Ousia."
" ^vm(j>eia," 209, 218.
Tarsus, Council of, 229.
TertuUian, 129, 144, 196.
Theodora, 273, 276.
Theodore of Mopsuestia, 203, 204
sq., exegetical, 210, friend of
Chrysostom, 210 sq., 214, 220,
error speculative, 224, vener
ated, 226, works studied, 238,
influence after death, 239, anath
ematized by Justinian, 275.
Theodoret, 212, 222, 225, 226, re
puted author of letter to Nes-

350

Index.

torius, 226 ; quarrel with Cyril,
231, 232, Six Articles, 234, at
tacked by Dioscorus, 244, de
posed, 244, excluded from Rob
ber Council, 245, sympathy with
Leo, 247, at Chalcedon, 251,
works anathematized by Justin
ian, 275, 277.
Theodosius IL, 222, 228, 244,
249, death, 250.
Theodosius the Great, 162, 172.
Theodotus, 56, 57, 71, 91.
Theopaschitism, 270.
Theophilus of Alexandria, 215,
219.
Theotocos, 210, 211, 213, 214,
219, 234.
"Three Chapters," 275 sq.
Tiberius, 278.
Tome of St. Leo, 247, 253, 257,
259, analysis, 260 sq.
Trinity, doctrine of, 69 sq. , refutes
pantheism, 73 sq., one solution
of difiiculties, 76, a fact not a
doctrine, 76, primitive thought,
81 sq., estimate of Athanasius,
146, review of thought to Second

General Council, 166 sq., posi
tion taken by Fourth General
Council, 252, termination of
discussion, 328. See Athana
sius, Christology, Christianity,
Council, First General, Hypos
tasis, etc.
Truth and reason, 32 sq. See
Church.
Tyre, Council of, 150, 152.
Ulfilas, 171.
Valens, 157.
Valentlnlan, 157.
Valentlnlan III., 249.
Victor, 57, 71.
Vigilius, 276 sq.
Virgin. See Theotocos.
Whitsunday, 31.
Zeno, 5.
Zeno, Emperor, 271, 272, 273.
Zenobia, 58.
Zephyrinus, 57, 71.

3 9002 01596

f2.«y«(l^