The claims of humanity appeal less to a monophysite than to other Christians. He places all life's values in the other world. He has no motive for trying to ameliorate the lot of his fellow-men. Social service has to him little or no divine sanction or religious value. We are speaking only of general tendencies. No follower of Christ, however perverted his views, could be totally indifferent to the welfare of other men; but it came natural to the monophysite to think that it does not matter much how a man lives in this world of shadows, provided he holds communion with the world of unseen realities. The same motive accounts for the rapid decline of missionary activity in their communion. The Nestorians were far more active propagandists. Worship is a very high type of service; but worship becomes selfish and sickens into sentiment, if it neglects the inspiring tonic of contact with human need. The monophysite Christology encouraged that form of self-sacrifice, whose goal is Nirvana, which lapses lazily into the cosmic soul and loses itself there in contemplation and ecstasy. It supplies no motive for that finer piety which manifests itself in ethical endeavour and practical philanthropy. His Christ had not partaken of the cup of suffering. His Christ's advance to human perfection was illusory. So the monophysite could not look for the sympathy of Christ in his own struggles, nor could he appeal to Christ's example in respect of works of human charity. Monophysitism considers only the religious nature of man, and takes no account of his other needs. We must therefore characterise the system as unsocial, unlovely, unsympathetic.
The uncompromising attitude of the individual monophysites was reflected in their ecclesiastical polity. We cannot but admire their sturdy independence. The monophysite church stood for freedom from state control. Her principles were the traditional principles of the Alexandrian see. Alexandria would not truckle to Constantinople, nor let religion subserve imperial policy. She would allow the catholic party to be Melchites (King's men) and to reap all the temporal advantages accruing to the established church. In this matter the monophysites took a narrow view; but their narrowness evinces their piety. They felt the evils attendant on Constantine's grand settlement, and they made their ill-judged protest. They made it for no unworthy motive. There are always such thinkers in the church. A spiritual enthusiast despises the outward dignity that the church gains from an alliance with the State, and is often blind to the spiritual benefits conferred on the nation by that alliance, while he concentrates his gaze on incidental evils. To connect with Christology such an attitude towards the principle of Establishment may seem forced at first sight. The connection, however, exists. Independence of the temporal power is symptomatic with that unworldliness which, as we have shown above, characterises monophysitism. Its adherents paid no respect to the human as such. They attached no value to merely human institutions, and made no attempt to see or foster the divine that is in them. The argument that because the State is a human institution it should have no voice in ecclesiastical policy is typically monophysite; it is the argument of one who could draw no inspiration from the human life of the Son of God.
Mysticism and rationalism have much in common. They both are elements in the mental composition of almost every serious thinker. The sterility of logic often drives him to seek a higher and surer instrument of knowledge. So there is no inconsistency in further characterising the monophysites as rationalists. The intellectuals of the eastern church were found mostly in their communion. Theirs was the formal logic point of view. Christ, they urged, was one and not two; therefore His nature was one and not two. They could not see that He was both. In Bergsonian language, they used exclusively mechanical categories. Intelligence, an instrument formed by contact with matter, destined for action upon matter, they used on a supra-material subject. Their thinkers were highly trained logicians; they revelled in abstract argument; theirs was a cold intellectual metaphysic, unwarmed by flesh and blood empiricism.
Their narrow outlook on life, their religious zeal and their rationalist philosophy combined to produce in them sectarianism of an extreme type. Party spirit ran high among them. They fought the catholics; they fought the Nestorians; they fought one another. The list of schisms that occurred in their communion is of amazing length. The letters of Severus of Antioch make sad reading. They show us that the patriarch had constantly to interfere in cases of disputed succession to bishoprics. At almost every vacancy in the provincial dioceses there were parties formed each with their own nominee, ready to schismatise if they could not secure recognition and consecration for him. It is evident that monophysitism does not foster the generous, tolerant, humane virtues of Christianity. It is the creed of monks, mystics, and intellectualists.
[[1]] E. W. Brooks, "Select Letters of Severus of Antioch," vol. ii. pp. 88, 89.
CHAPTER V
MONOPHYSITISM AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY
Christology divorced from empirical psychology is a barren science. Abstract discussions about person, nature and union of natures soon degenerate into logomachies. If personality is a psychic entity, and nature another distinct psychic entity, then the question at issue between diphysite and monophysite is worth debating. If they are concepts merely, the debate is hollow and of purely academic interest. A study of psychology clothes the dry bones with flesh. It puts life and meaning into these abstractions. It shows that they represent entities, that something corresponding to the terms "person" and "nature" is actually part of the being of every man, and that therefore their existence in Christ is a proper and practical subject for investigation. In so doing psychology provides the rationale of the Christological controversies. It justifies the church in her determined adherence to the precise expression of the truth. No Christian with powers of introspection, who can distinguish in his own being personality and nature, can be indifferent to the Christological problem. The problem is one of fact, not theory. The terms and the formula are only of importance as expressing or failing to express the true facts of Christ's being. In a word, the psychology of the central figure of human history is the matter at issue.