Monophysitism Past and Present: A Study in Christology

by A. A. Luce

The view taken of the Christ of the past necessarily affects belief in the Christ of the present. It is scarcely possible to realise the present existence of a human Christ, unless the fact of His actual human existence in the first century of our era be grasped. If He had but one nature on earth, He has but one nature now in heaven. If the historic Christ was monophysite, so also is the Christ to whom we pray. In this consequence consists the seriousness of modern monophysitism. The present reality of His human nature is to-day even among His followers doubted, obscured, or forgotten. Christ is to many spiritual minds merely an ideal personality, a summary of their own ethical ideals. They perhaps regard Him as a disembodied spirit or mysterious influence. They rarely attain the catholic standpoint and see the human nature as a psychic entity actually existent to-day. At any rate the doctrine is not thought out to its consequences. The "perpetual intercession" is, it is feared, little more than a phrase. That Christ as man still intercedes for men is a verity not understood and only half appreciated. Yet the official doctrine of orthodoxy teaches that there is a full and true continuity of existence between the Christ of Galilee and the Christ to whom we pray. The Church teaches that there is somewhere, in some transcendent form of existence, a being with perfect human mind, whose will in strength and scope is perfectly proportioned to His knowledge, whose feelings are in perfect mutual harmony, whose psychic nature finds outward expression in a glorified body; that this perfect being once walked this earth, and yet had and has the ground of His being in a divine personality. Such a Christ the latent monophysitism of our thinking hides from our view.

THE DOCTRINE OF SUBJECTIVE REDEMPTION DUE TO MONOPHYSITISM

The doctrines of Christ's person and of His work are intimately associated. What He did depended on what He was. Christology and Soteriology act and react upon each other. If Christology is crippled, Soteriology goes lame. Christ takes His stand in the centre of the cosmic process in virtue of His unique being. In that He unites deity and humanity in His own person, He brought redemption within the reach of mankind. His redemption of humanity was as definite a fact as His assumption of human nature. Both to the Christian are objective historical facts; if either of them falls to the ground, so does the other; and with that collapse goes the purpose of creation and humanity's hope. A docetic interpretation of the human nature entails a docetic view of redemption. Monophysitism, as we have seen, casts doubts upon the reality of the sufferings and humanity of Christ; in so doing it compromises the work He accomplished. Atonement ceases to be a cosmic transaction completed on Calvary, and becomes a subjective process. Redemption is made into an attitude, or rather a change of attitude, on the part of the individual. That Christ wrought a power and hope for man which man could not achieve for himself is not a familiar doctrine to-day. Pain, not sin, is the great modern problem. The Cross is made to stand for sympathy, not for satisfaction. Salvation, achieved at a definite moment of history and conferred on believers of subsequent generations, rests for its foundations on the objective assumption of human nature by a divine person. If the foundations be undermined, as monophysitism undermines them, the superstructure crumbles. Redemption becomes improvement by effort and self-help, or a constant endeavour after a private ideal of conduct.

MONOPHYSITISM LIMITS THE SCOPE OF REDEMPTION

Monophysitism shows itself also in the modern tendency to narrow the scope of redemption. Partial salvation is offered as a substitute for the salvation of the entire man. This tendency is a natural result of narrowing the import of the incarnation. It runs counter to orthodox Christology and the derivate doctrines. A divine economy is traceable in God's dealings with men; there is nothing purposeless, nothing otiose in God's dispensation. The Church's invariable answer to the Apollinarians was grounded in belief in this economy. She argued that Christ could not redeem what He did not assume, and, conversely, that what He assumed He redeemed. He assumed human nature in its entirety, thought, will, feeling and body; therefore not one of those elements of human nature lies outside the scope of redemption. Monophysitism excludes some or all of those elements from the being of the incarnate Christ, and by so doing deprives the corresponding elements in man's nature of their rightful share in the benefit of redemption.

The feeling that some parts of human nature are more fitted to survive than others is wide-spread to-day. It is found within as well as without the Church. We constantly read of the "survival factor." The term implies the belief that at death part of the man's nature survives and part perishes. There is, however, no general agreement as to which part constitutes the "survival factor." The intellectualist pins his faith to the immortality of the reason. He is content to let death deprive him of everything except the logical faculty. For the aesthete beauty alone is eternal, and his hope for the future lies in the continuance of his aesthetic sense. The materialist sees permanence only in the indestructibility of the ultimate physical constituents of his body. The epigenesis of a spiritual body lies outside his horizon. The volitionist finds all the value of life in the moral nature. For him the good will persists when all else is resolved into nothingness. Character alone, he says, survives the shock of death. All these limited views of survival are symptoms of monophysite ways of thinking. The Christian, on the contrary, holds that what is redeemed eo ipso survives. Whatever else is involved in redemption persistence certainly is included. Monophysitism stands for a partial redemption; but to the orthodox who believe that Christ assumed human nature in its entirety, each part and the whole are of infinite value. He holds that the strengthening, purifying, and perfecting that salvation brings apply to the psychic and the physical natures, that no part is exempt, that neither intellect nor will nor feeling ceases with death, that the range of reason will be increased, and its operation made more sure, that lofty and sustained endeavour will replace the transient energy of the earthly will, that feeling will be enhanced, harmonised, and purified, that a spiritual body continuous with the body of the flesh will express man's heavenly experience. These high far-reaching hopes rest on the doctrines of catholic Christology. Christ assumed our nature complete in body and psychic parts. He did so with a purpose, and that purpose could be none other than the redemption of the body and of all the psychic elements. To the mystic, body and human activities may seem only transient and unworthy of a place in heaven. Such is false spirituality. It is contrary to the tenor of catholic teaching. The incarnation brought divine and human together on earth. The resurrection fixed their union. The ascension gave humanity an eternal place among eternal things.

MONOPHYSITISM SHOWN IN THE MODERN TENDENCY
TO MAKE THE DEATH OF CHRIST A SECONDARY FACTOR
IN THE SCHEME OF REDEMPTION

We have seen above that monophysitism discredits the reality of Christ's sufferings. Dogmatic reasons apart, the monophysite is motived by a repugnance to physical pain and by a wish to exclude it from the experience of the human ideal. To this motive we can trace the modern tendency to transfer the doctrinal centre of gravity from the Passion to the incarnation. The Passion and Death used to occupy the first place in the thoughts of Christians and formed the foundation for all theories of atonement. The incarnation was regarded as, for the purposes of dogma, subsidiary. Within recent times the position has been reversed. The main stress falls now on the incarnation. The Passion seems of secondary importance, if, as modern theology often teaches, all purposes of redemption were secured prior to it. In thus changing the venue of redemption modern theology is wrong. The mistake is prompted largely, so it seems to the writer, by monophysitism latent in modern religious thought; at any rate strict adherence to the catholic doctrine of two natures would have prevented it. The human nature that Christ assumed had to be perfected through suffering; otherwise it could not attain that universality and representative character which enabled it to become the medium of universal salvation. If it had been enough for the divine spirit to mingle with men, to show them a pattern life, and to touch them to higher things, an apparition would have been adequate, and no community of suffering would have been necessary. Since Christ not only appeared as man, but experienced in His flesh all man's experiences, death which is the climax of human experience fell to His lot and set the seal to the divine enterprise. Since He who died was the flesh and blood embodiment of the cosmic relation. His death has cosmic significance. The doctrinal edifice in which Calvary is of ornamental and not of structural value has monophysitism for its foundation.

HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF CHRISTIANITY OBSCURED

Christ's mission is misunderstood to-day as well as His cosmic work. In certain religious quarters where zeal is not balanced by learning, His mission as the founder of a religious society is forgotten. To those who are deficient in historic sense the continuity of the Church down the centuries seems unimportant, and institutional religion a hindrance rather than a help to the spiritual life of the individual Christian. Pietism of this kind has always been present in the church; to-day it is prevalent. It nominally associates its piety with the historic Christ, but actually it worships an ideal constructed by its own ethical imagination. Such pietists spiritualise the faith. The facts of the historic creed are to them little more than symbols of religious truth. Spiritual resurrection, spiritual ascension are the only miracles for them. This tendency to spiritualise everything is a phase of monophysitism. It results from losing sight of the person of the historic Christ, and resolving His assumption of human nature into the assumption of a title.