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Edited from a variety of translations (mentioned in the preface) by H. R. Percival. Cf. The Symbol of Faith (Creed), as Defined by the Second Ecumenical Council, Bilingual - Greek / English - text, translated by Elpenor.
THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS Resources Online and in Print
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34 Pages
Page 15
The Apollinarians.
(Philip Schaff, in Smith and Wace, Dict. Christ. Biog., s.v. Apollinaris.)
Apollinaris was the first to apply the results of the Nicene controversy to Christology proper, and to call the attention of the Church to the psychical and pneumatic element in the humanity of Christ; but in his zeal for the true deity of Christ, and fear of a double personality, he fell into the error of a partial denial of his true humanity. Adopting the psychological trichotomy of Plato (soma psuche, pneuma), for which he quoted 1. Thess. v. 23 and Gal. v. 17, he attributed to Christ a human body (soma) and a human soul (the psuche alogos, the anima animans which man has in common with the animal), but not a rational spirit (nous, pneuma, psuche logike, anima rationalis,) and put in the place of the latter the divine Logos. In opposition to the idea of a mere connection of the Logos with the man Jesus, he wished to secure an organic unity of the two, and so a true incarnation; but he sought this at the expense of the most important constituent of man. He reached only a Theos sarkophoros as Nestorianism only an anthropos theophoros instead of the proper theandrotos . He appealed to the fact that the Scripture says, "the Word was made flesh"--not spirit; "God was manifest in the flesh" etc. To which Gregory Nazianzen justly replied that in these passages the term sarx was used by synecdoche for the whole human nature. In this way Apollinaris established so close a connection of the Logos with human flesh, that all the divine attributes were transferred to the human nature, and all the human attributes to the divine, and the two merged in one nature in Christ. Hence he could speak of a crucifixion of the Logos, and a worship of his flesh. He made Christ a middle being between God and man, in whom, as it were, one part divine and two parts human were fused in the unity of a new nature. He even ventured to adduce created analogies, such as the mule, midway between the horse and the ass; the grey colour, a mixture of white and black; and spring, in distinction from winter and summer. Christ, said he, is neither whole man, nor God, but a mixture (mixis) of God and man. On the other hand, he regarded the orthodox view of a union of full humanity with a full divinity in one person--of two wholes in one whole--as an absurdity. He called the result of this construction anthropotheos , a sort of monstrosity, which he put in the same category with the mythological figure of the Minotaur. But the Apollinarian idea of the union of the Logos with a truncated human nature might be itself more justly compared with this monster. Starting from the Nicene homoousion as to the Logos, but denying the completeness of Christ's humanity, he met Arianism half-way, which likewise put the divine Logos in the place of the human spirit in Christ. But he strongly asserted his unchangeableness, while Arians taught his changeableness (treptotes).
The faith of the Church revolted against such a mutilated and stunted humanity of Christ which necessarily involved also a merely partial redemption. The incarnation is an assumption of the entire human nature, sin only excluded. The ensarkosis is enanthropesis. To be a full and complete Redeemer, Christ must be a perfect man (teleios anthropos). The spirit or rational soul is the most important element in man, his crowning glory, the seat of intelligence and freedom, and needs redemption as well as the soul and the body; for sin has entered and corrupted all the faculties.
In the sentence immediately preceding the above Dr. Scruff remarks "but the peculiar Christology of Apollinaris has reappeared from time to time in a modified shape, as isolated theological opinion." No doubt Dr. Schaff had in mind the fathers of the so-called "Kenoticism" of to-day, Gess and Ebrard, who teach, unless they have been misunderstood, that the incarnate Son had no human intellect or rational soul (nous) but that the divine personality took its place, by being changed into it. By this last modification, they claim to escape from the taint of the Apollinarian heresy. [229]
Reference address : https://elpenor.org/ecumenical-councils/second.asp?pg=15
