Monophysitism Past and Present: A Study in Christology

by A. A. Luce

MONOPHYSITISM ANNULS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN
DIVINE PERSON AND DIVINE NATURE

This distinction is of paramount importance in Christology. Diphysites hold fast to the distinction. They maintain a human nature in Christ, but they do not humanise His person. The person cannot be humanised. It remained divine after the incarnation, as it was before. Though He became man, the depth of His being was unchanged. The rain from heaven and the waters from the earthly spring mingle in one stream, but beneath the surface the deep undercurrent of being flows on unchanged. The monophysite in effect abandons this distinction. This is where his psychology is most seriously at fault. He confuses person and nature. Deep-seated and superficial states of soul are all one to him. He does not see the duality in the being of his fellow-men; so he cannot see it in the ideal man. This is a consequence of monophysitism which has not attracted the attention of theologians, and which the monophysite himself did not intend. The doctrine that rules out the human nature of Christ rules out the divine nature also, by confusing it with the personality. The monophysite affirms the divine nature while denying the human. Such affirmation is purely verbal. It is completely void of significance. The contrast between the divine and human natures is needed to throw personality into relief. Take away the human nature, and that contrast disappears, and with it goes the distinction between divine person and divine nature. Then, instead of a transcendent personality in whose portrait divine and human features are distinctly limned, we have a blur. Where God planned a unique though intelligible psychic harmony, we find a psychic medley.

CONSCIOUSNESS OF PERSONALITY PRODUCED
BY A VIOLENT CHANGE OF OCCUPATION

This assertion is justified by an appeal to human experience. Men become sure of their own or of other people's personality by experiencing strong contrasts of natures in themselves or by observing them in others. For instance, a sudden and violent change of occupation establishes personality as a distinct entity. The civilian turns soldier. Almost immediately all parts of his nature are affected. He feels the development, as it were, of a second nature within him. His faculties are transformed. He enters a new universe of thought. His range of knowledge narrows in one direction, widens in another. His volitional nature is altered. His will narrows in scope, but increases in intensity. Nor does his emotional nature escape the change. Aesthetic values are reversed. He no longer feels pleasure and pain at the old objects. Physical desires play a much larger part in his life, and he loses taste for intellectual pleasures. The soldier returns to civilian life and, as it were, with his civilian attire he resumes his former nature, and all his old thoughts and feelings and impulses come flooding back. Such an experience is of considerable psychological interest. It exemplifies the interpenetration of different states of thought and activity. The contrasts bring home to a man the fact that his spirit is a synthesis of heterogeneous elements. They force him back on himself. They rouse in him the dormant sense of personal being. It is the apprehension of strong contrast in his experience of himself, the apprehension of the plurality of his being, that accentuates the deep-lying unity. The more violent the change in the walks of life, the clearer becomes the concept of the continuity. Civilian or soldier, the man, the person is the same.

Personality is thrown into relief not only by change of occupation, but also by moral contrasts. Conflicting passions, opposing motives and internal debate serve to make a man realise himself. Strong personalities are often those in whom the conflict between good and evil is most acute. It is the very opposition of natures which brings out the personal element into the full light of conscious recognition.

We must now examine human personality in greater detail; we must indicate its functions and show how it differs from human nature. Only by coming to grips with this psychological problem is it possible to appreciate the points at issue in the Christological question and to judge between catholic and monophysite.

KANT AND THE DUAL CHARACTER OF THE EGO

Kant distinguished the noumenal from the phenomenal ego. The former he regarded as an idea, the latter as a reality in time. The distinction corresponds roughly to that between person and nature. The phenomenal ego is the nature of man. It bears the brunt of the struggle of life. The noumenal ego is the transcendent personality of the individual—an idea which pure reason necessarily forms and which practical reason establishes. Though the Kantian philosophy no longer carries conviction, it is interesting to see that Kant felt and admitted a double current in man's being. He recognised that the superficial self is not the true being of the man. It is not necessary, however, to go as far as Kant went. We need not with him relegate the core of personal being to the realm of idea. Granted that personality is not part of our normal experience as nature is, there are times when the depths of being are stirred. Moments of crisis drive a man deeper than will and thought and even feeling, and make him conscious of himself as a psychic unity, permanent and of infinite value. Personality normally remains in the recesses of the subconscious. It is the hidden basis of life. It is active, though its activities are for the most part underground. It does not, however, lie altogether outside the ken of consciousness. It may be experienced; it is experienced when great emotion rends the surface fabric of the man and discloses the true self.

HUMAN PERSONALITY AND HUMAN NATURE

What is human personality? It is a psychic entity whose most important function is to unify the parts of a man's nature. It is the principle of unity and the instrument of unity. A man's thought, will and feeling are distinct and real entities. His intelligence takes various forms from perception to abstract thought; it may be directed to outward things, to thoughts of things, or to pure idea. He wills many things, and wills them in different modes and with varying degrees of intensity. A wide range of feeling is found in him, from physical to mental, from organic to ideal feeling. His nature is tripartite. Each part admits of variation in itself and in its interaction with the other parts. Each of the three expresses the man at the moment. No one of the three gives the whole account of his being. Nor do the three taken together. Though his nature is tripartite the man himself cannot be resolved into component parts. He has his faculties and states, but he is more than their sum. He may lose himself in thought or activity, or abandon himself to feeling, but when he is fulfilling his true function, when he is most himself, all parts of his nature are concentrated to a point. Partial activity of thought, will, or feeling is then replaced by activity of the personality. Personality is the synthetic unity of all parts of a man's nature. It has the wonderful power of compressing to a point a medley of psychic elements. Moods and memories, perceptions and ideas, wishes and purposes, it tensions them all up, merges them and expresses them in characteristic acts representative of the man.