Monophysitism Past and Present: A Study in Christology

by A. A. Luce

MONOPHYSITISM AND NON-CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

We leave here the subject of the influence of other heresies on monophysitism, and proceed to exhibit its affinities with non-Christian thought. At Alexandria, the home of the heresy, two systems of philosophy, the Aristotelian and the Neo-Platonist, were strongly represented. Both of these philosophies exercised a profound influence upon the origins and upon the later developments of monophysite doctrine. We propose to take, first, the Aristotelian, and then the Neo-Platonist philosophy, elucidating those leading ideas in each on which the monophysite thinker would naturally fasten, as lending intellectual support to his religious views.

THE ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC

Aristotle was held in high estimation by the monophysite leaders, particularly in the sixth and seventh centuries. His works were translated into Syriac in the Jacobite schools. The West owes much to these translations. For it was largely by this agency that his metaphysic reached the Arabs, who transmitted it to the West in the Middle Ages.

The Aristotelian logic was widely known among the monophysites. It seems to have formed part of their educational curriculum. Taken apart from the rest of the system, the logic produces a type of mind that revels in subtle argumentation. It exalts the form of thought at the expense of the matter. It had this effect on the monophysite theologians. They were trained dialecticians. They were noted for their controversial powers, for their constant appeal to definition, for the mechanical precision of their arguments. These mental qualities, excellent in themselves, do not conduce to sound theology. Formal logic effects clarity of thought often at the expense of depth. It treats thoughts as things. Procedure, that is proper in the sphere of logic, is out of place in psychology and theology. Concepts such as person and nature must be kept fluid, if they are not to mislead. If they are made into hard and fast ideas, into sharply defined abstractions, they will be taken to represent discrete psychic entities, external to one another as numbers are. The elusive, Protean character of the inter-penetrating realities behind them will be lost to view. The most signal defect of monophysite method is its unquestioning submission to the Aristotelian law of contradiction. The intellectual training that makes men acute logicians disqualifies them for dealing with the living subject. The monophysite Christologians were subtle dialecticians, but the psychology of Christ's being lay outside their competence.

ARISTOTLE'S CRITICISM OF DUALISM—A WEAPON
IN THE HANDS OF THE MONOPHYSITES

Leaving the formal element in Aristotle's system, we come to its material content. Some of the prominent ideas of the Aristotelian cosmology and psychology reappear in the heresy we are studying. We shall take first the rejection of the Platonic dualism. Aristotle's repeated criticism of his master's theory of ideas is not merely destructive. It formed the starting-point for his own metaphysic. The ideas, he says, simply duplicate the world of existent things. They do not create things or move them; they do not explain genesis or process; they merely co-exist with the ideates. The participation which Plato's later theory postulated is inadequate. A more intimate relation is required. The theory of ideas confronts God with a world, and leaves the relation between them unformulated and inexplicable.

This criticism is of first importance for theology. Faith as well as reason demands a real relation between idea and ideate. The Christian student in the fifth century, familiar with Aristotle's criticism of Plato, would inevitably apply it in Christology. Any theory of redemption that ascribed duality to the Redeemer would seem to him to be open to the objections that Aristotle had urged against the theory of ideas. The Nestorian formula, in effect, juxtaposed the ideal Christ and the real Jesus, and left the two unrelated. This was Platonism in Christology. Aristotle's attack on Plato's system provided a radical criticism of Nestorianism. The monophysite theologians were blind to the difference between the Nestorian position and that of the orthodox. They saw that Aristotle had placed a powerful weapon in their hands, and they used it indifferently against both opposing parties.

ARISTOTLE'S PSYCHOLOGY

We turn now to Aristotle's psychology. We must give a brief sketch of it in order to establish the fact that the Aristotelian and the monophysite science of the soul labour under the same defect. It is a radical defect, namely, the almost complete absence of the conception of personality. The principle of Aristotle's psychology, like that of his metaphysic, is the concept of form and matter. The soul of man comes under the general ontological law. All existence is divisible into grades, the lower grade being the matter whose form is constituted by the next highest grade. Thus there is a graduated scale of being, starting from pure matter and rising to pure form. The inorganic is matter for the vegetable kingdom, the vegetable kingdom for the animal kingdom; the nutritive process is material for the sensitive, and the sensitive for the cognitive. Man is an epitome of these processes. The various parts of his nature are arranged in an ascending scale; form is the only cohesive force. The animal soul is the form of the body, born with it, growing with it, dying with it; the two are one in the closest union conceivable. Besides the soul of the body, there is, says Aristotle, a soul of the soul. This is reason, essentially different from animal and sensitive soul. It is not connected with organic function. It is pure intellectual principle. It is immaterial, immortal, the divine element in man. This reason is not a bare unity. As it appears in human experience, it is not full-grown. Potentially it contains all the categories, but the potentiality must be actualised. Consequently reason subdivides into active and passive intellect. The action of the former on the latter, and the response of the latter to the former, constitute the development of the mind, the education of the truth that is potentially present from the beginning.