Monophysitism Past and Present Part 5

SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTER

We have examined the doctrine of one nature, and exposed its chief consequences. We have considered its effects in respect of the deity of Christ and in respect of His manhood. We have applied the doctrine to the human nature as a whole, and to the several parts that compose it. The result of the examination may be summarised in brief.

Monophysitism destroys what is divine in the deity and what is human in the humanity. It offers to Christians a Christ who is not sufficiently above man to be able to help them by His power, nor sufficiently man to be able to help them by His sympathy. The monophysite Christ is neither very G.o.d nor very man, but a composition in which all traces of the original ent.i.ties are lost to view.

[1] "The Chronicle of Zachariah of Mitylene," translated by Hamilton and Brooks, chap. iii. p. 46.

[2] This addition to the Trisagion was officially condemned at the close of the 7th century owing to its monophysite a.s.sociations.

[3] "Chronicle of Zachariah of Mitylene," translated by Hamilton and Brooks, ii. 2, p. 21.

[4] The question of Justinian's orthodoxy has been debated by Bury and Hutton. See _Guardian_, March 4th and April 15th, 1896.

CHAPTER IV

THE ETHOS OF MONOPHYSITISM

Monophysitism originated in a monastery. Eutyches, "the father of the monophysites," was a monk. The monastic temperament is peculiarly susceptible to this heresy, and the monastic element has always been dominant in the monophysite churches. The cloister is the natural habitat of the doctrine of the one nature. Monasticism is applied monism. If the world's existence be a sham, if its value compared with G.o.d be negligible, it becomes a religious duty to avoid all influences that heighten the illusion of the world's real existence and intrinsic value. The monist, like the monk, must renounce all secular interests and "go out of the world." The path of renunciation had an additional claim on the Christological monist. In his universal ideal, as manifested in time, the human elements were sublimated into the divine.

Consequently his ideal of conduct imposed a negative att.i.tude towards the world and a merging of his ego in the universal spirit. These are the ruling elements in the spirit of the cloister, and these are the characteristics of the monophysite ethos.

Those men, to whom G.o.d is the sum of all reality and the world merely a cosmic shadow, regard wors.h.i.+p as the sole worthy activity of the human spirit. In wors.h.i.+p union with G.o.d is sought, a union so close that the personality of the wors.h.i.+pper is absorbed into the being of the wors.h.i.+pped. His experience of G.o.d is so intimate that his experience of the world is reduced to insignificance. As an overpowering human love welds two beings into one, and identifies their thoughts, wills, springs of action and even feelings, so the _amor dei_ identifies man with G.o.d and makes possible a deification of humanity. Deeply religious natures in all ages have heard this mystic call. To lose their ego in the divine spirit is the height of their religious ambition. The conception is lofty, but it is not the Christian ideal of life and duty.

Mysticism and monophysitism are twin systems. Both are religious phases of pantheism. As, to the intellect, acosmism is the corollary of pantheism, so, to the heart, asceticism follows from mysticism.

Whether conceived in terms of existence or of value, the world for the mystic is an obstacle to the _unio mystica_. It snares the mind through the senses and creates a fict.i.tious -appearance of solid reality in sensuous objects. It makes pretensions to goodness and attaches to itself a spurious value. The only remedy is self-denial, denial of existence to the world, denial of credence to the senses, denial of gratification to the pa.s.sions, desires, and inclinations.

The monophysites were mystics. They were the rigorists of the eastern church. They formed the "no compromise" party. They stood for a thorough-going renunciation of the world and the flesh. Though they did not officially lay down the inherent evil of matter, Manicheanism is latent in their system. They did not explicitly identify matter with the spirit of evil, but they had the spiritual man's suspicion of matter and his contempt for the body of the flesh. Abstinence, mortification of the flesh, and all ascetic practices flourished in their communion. Art and culture were suspect; they had no eye for natural beauty. Some of their hymn-writers possessed considerable poetic taste; but poetry was discouraged by their leaders. Several of the extant letters of Severus of Antioch show that that patriarch did his best to banish that art from his church. His att.i.tude may be gathered from the following quotation.[1] "As to Martyrius, the poet, ... I wish you to know that he is a trouble to me and a nuisance.

Indeed in the case of the others also who follow the same profession, and were enrolled in the holy clergy of the Church that is with us, I have debarred them from practising such poetry; and I am taking much trouble to sever this theatrical pursuit from ecclesiastical gravity and modesty, a pursuit that is the mother of laxity and is also capable of causing youthful souls to relax and casting them into the mire of fornication, and carrying them to b.e.s.t.i.a.l pa.s.sions." The result of this asceticism was a jaundiced and inhuman outlook on life. There was much piety among the monophysites, but it was confined to a narrow channel. Their zeal for purity of doctrine amounted to fanaticism; their hatred of the Nestorian and of the Melchite at times reached a white heat. Toleration was almost unknown in their communion.

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.

Wors.h.i.+p is a very high type of service; but wors.h.i.+p 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 att.i.tude of the individual monophysites was reflected in their ecclesiastical polity. We cannot but admire their st.u.r.dy 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 att.i.tude 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 inst.i.tutions, and made no attempt to see or foster the divine that is in them. The argument that because the State is a human inst.i.tution 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 G.o.d.

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 ent.i.ty, and nature another distinct psychic ent.i.ty, 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 ent.i.ties, 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.

Reference to psychological fact is what one misses in the records of the old controversies. The disputes read as if they were about shadows. No doubt that was often the case. Catholics and non-Catholics were often agreed as to the substance of belief, while owing to their devotion to words and formulae the agreement went unrecognised. Had the disputants made clear to themselves and to each other what they meant by their abstract terms, had they translated them into their concrete psychological equivalents, heresy and schism would have been less frequent. It was, however, almost impossible for them to do so, because in their day theology was far more highly developed than psychology. Systematic observation of the workings of spirit was almost unknown. There existed no science of psychology as we know it.

No clear notions attached to the terms "person" and "nature." They represented abstractions necessary to discursive reason rather than concrete psychic facts. All parties shared this defect. Among catholics and Nestorians as well as among monophysites knowledge of the const.i.tuents of human nature was of the most rudimentary character.

The catholic party, however, by keeping close to the facts recorded in the gospels, achieved a Christological formula that is psychologically intelligible; while the heretical parties were led by their preconceived opinions to fas.h.i.+on a Christ, whose features are unrecognisable as G.o.d or man, a psychological monstrosity.

BERGSON'S THEORIES THROW LIGHT ON CHRISTOLOGY

Without claiming finality for the findings of modern psychology, we can consider some results of the science as established. They are sufficiently well established, at any rate, to provide a starting-point for our investigation. In particular the brilliant observations and theories of M. Bergson throw, so it seems to the writer, a flood of light on Christology. We propose to outline the two key doctrines of the Bergsonian psychology and show how they confirm the truth of the orthodox formula and expose the monophysite fallacy. These key doctrines are, first, the interpenetration of psychic states, and, second, the distinction between deep-seated and superficial consciousness.

BERGSON'S THEORY OF THE INTERPENETRATION OF PSYCHIC STATES

It is, says Bergson, characteristic of psychic states that they do not, like material things remain external to one another. They inter-penetrate. Cut up by human intelligence into discrete elements, in their own nature they remain a continuum. States of mind appear successive and external to one another, because age-long a.s.sociation with matter has accustomed men to material modes of thought. Man's intelligence is a by-product of activity. For purposes of action it is the externality of things that matters. The inner connection is relatively unimportant. Men act with precision on matter, because perception cuts up the continuum of matter into bodies, defined bodies no two of which can occupy the same s.p.a.ce. Intelligence originating thus by contact with matter naturally prefers mechanical categories.

These categories applicable to matter when applied to higher forms of existence mislead. We naturally conceive psychic states as external to one another, and their interpenetration seems an abnormality. At this stage of thought experience is pictured as a line of indefinite length, infinitely divisible, whose divisions correspond to the moments of consciousness. This spatial picture of mind is misleading in many ways, not the least in that it can offer no reasonable theory of the subconscious. Thinkers who materialise mental experience have no room in their theory for the sub-conscious. It is for them bare non-consciousness, a psychic vacuum. When, however, we start from this unique characteristic, that mind possesses, of remaining one and indivisible throughout the greatest appearance of diversity, the sub-conscious falls naturally into the scheme. No part of our experience perishes. It is essentially self-perpetuating memory. The needs of action relegate the greater portion of it to the sub-conscious, but it is there, always linked to our conscious experience, and only awaiting the occasion to emerge into the full light of consciousness. Past penetrates into the present. One portion of our present penetrates into the other portions. Conscious and unconscious, past and present, combine to form one wonderful whole.

MONOPHYSITISM IGNORES THE DUALITY IN CHRIST'S EXPERIENCE

Such in outline is Bergson's theory of the interpenetration of psychic states. If this psychology be adopted, the abstract character of the catholic doctrine of Christ's being in large measure disappears. It becomes easy to conceive the interpenetration of two natures in one Christ. Further, the Bergsonian psychology furnishes a standpoint from which criticism of monophysitism is easy. Psychology at the monophysite stage of thought conceives the moments of Christ's consciousness in their mutual externality; they follow each other as do the ticks of a clock. They are discrete elements strung along on a hypothetical ego. Christ's experience is conceived as unilinear. All that He did, suffered and thought is regarded as having taken place on one and the same plane of experience. This psychology has no room for another plane of experience. It has no room for a positive sub-consciousness. Consequently that one plane must be the one divine nature, which, as the monophysites taught, absorbed the human.

The one-nature theory is not true to the facts. It overlooks the complexity of Christ's experience. His experiences lie on two different planes. He has different universes of thought, different actuating wills and sets of feelings. Christ is not in one nature.

The phases of His consciousness are twofold. His experiences fall naturally into two groups. While one group is in consciousness, the other is below the level of consciousness. Now the human experiences, now the divine, are uppermost. Both are always present. Life under such conditions is inconceivable, unless full recognition be accorded to the fact that conscious states interpermeate. If each state fall outside the other, and consciousness be a chain of successive ideas or emotions, a twofold nature within the one experience is meaningless.

The view of conscious states as discrete leads inevitably to determinism. The place of one state in the chain is conditioned by its predecessor. There is no room for the spontaneity and the creative power which characterise conscious life. a.s.sociationism cannot countenance the unforeseen and incalculable. So it is out of sympathy with Christian psychology. A function of the divine in Christ is to introduce the element of the unforeseen and incalculable into His normal and human experience. The Bergsonian psychology thus supplies an intellectual basis for belief in the possibility of two natures in Christ. When ideas are regarded as psychic ent.i.ties whose essential property is mutual penetration, the ground is prepared for the catholic formula. Where this truth is not recognised, there arises inevitably the tendency to a.s.sert that Christ had and must have had but one uniform level of experience, and that a.s.sertion is the essence of monophysitism.

BERGSON'S THEORY OF DEEP-SEATED AND SUPERFICIAL STATES

Bergson's psychology throws further light on a central doctrine of catholic Christology. It not only makes conceivable, as we have shown above, the co-existence of the two natures, but it lends support to the belief in the independent reality of His personality. Person and nature of Christology find their modern equivalents in the Bergsonian "deep-seated" and "superficial" states of consciousness. Bergson draws a sharp line of distinction between these two. The deep-seated states const.i.tute the kernel of being. They are the man's existence turned inwards. They are independent, free, creative. They are a unifying force. Always present, they only rarely make their presence felt.

Only at moments of deep experience do they interfere with the surface self. The superficial states form the outward-regarding existence of man. They represent consciousness relaxed into moments of clock-time, moments more or less external to one another. They are not truly free.

They are conditioned by the material environment. Whatever be thought of the metaphysic of this system, recognition cannot be refused to that part of it which rests on the solid foundation of psychological fact.

Self-a.n.a.lysis discloses a two-fold experience in man. The stream of his life contains both current and undercurrent. The current is nature, the under-current personality.

MONOPHYSITISM ANNULS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN DIVINE PERSON AND DIVINE NATURE