Monophysitism Past and Present Part 6

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 G.o.d planned a unique though intelligible psychic harmony, we find a psychic medley.

CONSCIOUSNESS OF PERSONALITY PRODUCED BY A VIOLENT CHANGE OF OCCUPATION

This a.s.sertion 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 ent.i.ty. 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 pa.s.sions, 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 ent.i.ty 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 ent.i.ties. 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 tripart.i.te. 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 tripart.i.te 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.

Personality differs from nature also in respect of relation to environment. It is relatively independent of circ.u.mstances. Habit and education mould the nature, but if they touch the person they do so only indirectly. The nature must be deeply affected before a change in the person is registered. Personality is not synonomous with inherited disposition; but it bears a similar relation to nature as inherited disposition does to acquired habit. It is to nature what character is to action. It is to nature what in Weismann's theory the germ plasm is to the somatic cell. Changes in it are mediated by nature and are almost imperceptible in a life time.

Again, nature is the superficies of the soul. It is the part that comes in contact with the world of things and people. A man's nature is what he is for other people; what he is in and for himself alone is personality. There is a substance or self-existence of the psychic states. Thought, will and feeling have all and each an external reference. The internal reference of the whole is the core of being.

Our perception of personality in other people is a subtle thing. In the ordinary give and take of life we are not aware of it. It is when we realise the subject as a self-existent unity that we recognise personality. We judge a man's nature by his thought or will or feelings as conveyed through the ordinary channels of communication.

Personality is felt. It is a magnetism that influences, but remains inarticulate.

Person and nature differ also in respect of relation to the body. The co-existence of heterogeneous natures in the same body is a fact of experience. Different universes of thought, different levels of will and feeling can be lodged in one organism. The higher the development of the individual, the more clearly marked is the duality or plurality of nature. It is otherwise with personality. In normal cases no two personalities can tenant the one body. The unity of the organism is the outward expression and guarantee of the unity of the person. There are of course pathological cases which form exceptions to this rule.

Such cases, however, only serve to emphasise the distinction between person and nature. In cases of dual personality the occupancy of the one body is not simultaneous. Jekyll alternates with Hyde. Dual personality is a totally different phenomenon from duality of nature.

Duality of nature is relatively superficial. In dual personality the divergence in mental and moral outlook is so radical that responsibility for the acts of the one ent.i.ty cannot attach to the other ent.i.ty.

Personality then is the synthetic principle in man's being. Psychology reveals it as unifying the parts of a man's soul and welding into an indivisible whole the various elements of conscious and subconscious experience. The student of Christology welcomes this account of personality, but he requires more. He seeks a parallel for the union of two whole and perfect natures. He demands some reason for holding the central dogma of the incarnation to be intelligible and probable.

The next step in the argument accordingly is to ask, "Why limit the synthetic power of personality?" If personality can synthesise parts of a nature, why should it not also synthesise natures? If human personality can unify such heterogeneous psychic elements as thought, will and feeling, and present them as a harmonious whole, is it not credible that divine personality should carry the synthesis a step further and harmonise in one being the thoughts, wills and feelings of G.o.d and man? The hypostatic union of natures in Christ is a phenomenon not psychologically improbable, and one which can be paralleled from human experience. There is in man what is tantamount to a conjunction of the two natures. Man is rather diphysite than monophysite. We pointed out above the extensive modifications that can be produced in a man's nature by environment. There is in him a deeper duality which we can only characterise as an a.s.sociation of divine and human. Man is an inhabitant of the earth, of earthly descent and finite destiny; yet the divine is not totally foreign to him. He has hopes of heaven, moments of supraconsciousness, at times vision, resolve and emotion that are supra-normal. The divine is an element in him. It is more than an aspect of his nature. Its influence operates often in opposition to the human element. He is, as Bergson puts it, at the meeting-point of the upward and the downward currents. He can know G.o.d, can do the will of G.o.d, can be filled with the love of G.o.d. Here are the three factors of his nature, raised to a higher power. His experience may lie and often does lie on two planes. He is "double lived in regions new."

In applying this human a.n.a.logy to the ideal man caution is necessary.

The duality of natures is a fact in both cases, but there is one essential difference. The personal substratum of the natures in one case is human, in the other case divine. In man the divine element is part of his nature, but not part of his person. The ego remains human through all spiritual development. "The best of saints is a saint at the best." The secondary element in him is a fact, but it is part of his nature, not of his person. It is otherwise in the case of Christ.

He came from the ideal world and returned there. The background of his experience was and is divine. The secondary element in Him was the human, the primary the divine. He shared man's experience and shared it really, but it did not form part of the core of His being. When He thought or willed or felt as a man, it was a _kenosis_, a limiting of his natural mode of self-expression. Divine and human are both present in the experience of Christ and of mankind, but with this difference--man rises to the divine; Christ condescended to the human.

VALUE OF BERGSON'S PSYCHOLOGY TO ORTHODOX CHRISTOLOGY

Person and nature are then real and distinct psychic ent.i.ties. They are real alike in G.o.d and man. The distinction between them is not artificial or verbal; it is perhaps elusive, but it is genuine and capable of proof from experience. The synthetic faculty of personality manifests itself in uniting without confusing, first, parts of the nature, second, entire natures. These theses supply what is requisite for an intelligent appreciation of Christology. Without them Christology is a battle of shadows; with them it becomes a practical problem of first importance for religious minds. The psychology which justifies orthodox Christology is that which proclaims the interpenetration of psychic states, and which distinguishes between the surface states of a relaxed consciousness, and the deep-seated states which are ever present, but of which we are conscious only at moments of tension.

The catholic mind conceives the person of Christ as an eternal self-existent synthetic unity that has combined in an indissoluble union the natures of G.o.d and man. Human parallels make intelligible the co-existence of the two natures in the one person and the one body.

What is normal in man is surely possible in the ideal man. Heretical Christologies err in their psychology. In Nestorian Christology Christ is presented as a dual personality, an abnormal a.s.sociation in one body of two distinct self-existent beings. Thus a pathological case would be elevated to the rank of mankind's ideal. The monophysite psychology plunges men into the opposite error. An undiscriminating craving for unity among the phenomena of psychic life prevents any recognition of the dual character of experience. Monophysitism is blind to the difference between person and nature because it places all psychic experiences on the one level. Determined to find unity in its ideal, it seeks an inappropriate unity, the mathematical unity, the unity that excludes plurality. To the monophysite the major part of the gospels is a sealed book, because the major part of the facts there recorded about Christ could not possibly have happened to a one-natured Christ.

His human knowledge, normal, limited, progressive, His human will, natural, adequate to the human, inadequate to the superhuman task, his human feelings, his body consubstantial with ours are to the monophysite merely shadows or symbols or aspects of something greater.

They are dwarfed into nothingness. They are lost in the divine omniscience, omnipotence and transcendent love.

CHAPTER VI

MONOPHYSITISM IN THE PRESENT DAY

"To believe rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ" is an ideal that the thoughtful Christian strives to attain. He expects to find the solution of high moral and speculative problems in that union of divine and human. The right faith is not easily reached. It is an elusive prize. There are conditions moral and intellectual attaching to its possession. The moral conditions may take a lifetime to fulfil.

Even on its intellectual side faith is a long process. No sudden mental grasp of the whole truth can be attained. It dawns on the mind gradually. The discipline of faith in the incarnation consists in a gradual and laborious advance from stage to stage. The various stages are half-truths or inadequate conceptions of Christ. They are objectified in the Christological heresies. These heresies arrange themselves in a sequence so strict and so logical that one could almost say that they are deducible _a priori_ from the concept "divine-human."

Certainly the subjective fancies of the heresiarchs do not provide the whole account. There is something of the universal in these heresies.

They are in the main current of religious thought. As the chief historic systems of philosophy repeat themselves in each generation and in the intellectual development of individual thinkers, so do the Christological heresies recur. There is considerable truth in Hegel's contentions that the development of a man's mind is one with that of the general consciousness, that the individual reason is a miniature of the universal reason, that in fact the history of a philosopher's thinking is an abstract of the history of philosophy. The same holds good in the field of religious thought. Without much artificiality, without forcing the facts, a rational scheme of the Christological heresies might be drawn up. They might be pictorially represented as the rungs of a ladder, which the truth-seeking mind scales rung by rung, pausing at the lower phases of Christological thought, and then resuming the ascent till the highest truth is attained. The instrument of thought is much the same in all centuries; the objects of thought vary very little; so it is intelligible that the products of speculative and religious thought should remain the same to-day as in the fifth century.

THE EXISTENCE OF MODERN MONOPHYSITISM

Is there such a thing as modern monophysitism? To this question the preceding paragraph supplies the answer, "There must be." Heretical tendencies will be found in the Christian community in every generation, and the religious thought of individual Christians will pa.s.s through heretical phases. Such heresy is rather an intellectual than a moral fault; but the possibility of being the heirs, without knowing it, of the opinions of Nestorius and Eutyches throws on thinkers to-day the responsibility of examining their Christological beliefs and of testing them by the canon of orthodoxy. Not a few leaders of religious thought, in intention orthodox, in fact remain monophysites, through inability to a.n.a.lyse their beliefs or through a false sense of security, founded on the opinion that the age of heresy is past.

It is commonly supposed that belief in the deity of Christ const.i.tutes Christianity. That supposition is wrong. Arius was not the only heresiarch. To transcend the Arian standpoint is only the first step in the long discipline of faith. There are other heresies, other half-truths scarcely less pernicious than the Arian. The recognition of Christ as G.o.d represents a great intellectual and moral advance, and is the first essential step in religion; but to rest content with the taking of that step is to remain on the lowest rung of the ladder of faith. It is little use to form a lofty conception of Christ, if in doing so we insulate Him from the world of things and souls. That is what monophysitism does, and because disguised monophysitism is prevalent in the church to-day, Christianity's grip is weak and the fire of devotion low.

We may picture faith as a battlefield. Doubt is the enemy entrenched in depth. Arianism holds the first line of trenches. Echeloned behind Arianism are the other heresies in a network of fortified redoubts, strong points and support trenches. The church militant must make the furthest line her objective. If her advance stays at an intermediate point, she is exposed to cross-fire from the support trenches of the subsidiary heresies. The ground gained by the first a.s.sault proves untenable. The position won can only be secured by pus.h.i.+ng home the attack to the final objective and consolidating her line there in the might of full catholic doctrine.

A thorough and systematic advance of this sort was made by the orthodox Christologians of the fifth century. The campaign was fought and won then. It has, however, to be fought anew in each generation and in the experience of individual thinkers. Monophysitism is commonly regarded as a vagary of oriental thought, killed once and for all by a church council in the fifth century. That is a superficial view.

Monophysitism is a hydra growth, and no Hercules can be found to exterminate it. It reappears in each succeeding age, in West as well as East. The structure of the human intellect is such that, whenever men begin to investigate the being of Christ, the tendency to regard Him as one-natured is present. The church of the fifth century exposed that doctrine; it was beyond her power to kill it.

REASONS FOR THE PREVALENCE OF MONOPHYSITISM

Monophysitism is in our midst undetected to-day. It is not hard to account for its prevalence. The clergy are for the most part unable to expound Christology, and the laity are impatient of exposition.

Anything savouring of precise theology is at a discount. So pulpit and pew conspire to foster the growth of the tares. The "Athanasian" creed is in disrepute, and its statement of dogmatic Christology is involved in the discredit attaching to the d.a.m.natory clauses. The clergy are perhaps rather glad to leave the subject alone. They know it is a difficult subject, and they are afraid of burning their fingers. The laity rarely hear any reference to the two natures of Christ. If they do, they are not interested; they do not think that the question makes any difference to faith or practice. The whole extent of the Christological knowledge possessed by the average churchman is comprised in the formula, "Christ is G.o.d and man." He cannot apply the formula nor reconcile it with common sense. He occasionally hears from the pulpit the phrase "G.o.d-man"; but it is a mere phrase to him; it is not translated for him into a language that he can understand. So he registers the doctrine mentally as an impenetrable mystery and gives it no further attention, or perhaps turns away in disgust from the system whose central figure is so unintelligibly presented by its authorised exponents. The bare statement that Christ is G.o.d and man, though true, is not adequate. It carries no conviction to thinking minds to-day.

The full definition of the council of Chalcedon should be published broadcast, and so studied by theologians in the light of modern psychology that they can present it as a reasonable dogma, intelligible to-day and touching modern life.

In the absence of such teaching the spread of false, unbalanced or inadequate conceptions of what Christ was and of what He is is inevitable. Our concern here is to exhibit those of a monophysite character. Monophysite tendencies of the present day may be grouped according as they affect Christ's being or His work or Christian practice. We propose to take them in that order.

MODERN PRESENTATIONS OF CHRIST ESOTERIC AND DEFICIENT IN PERSONAL APPEAL

Monophysitism in respect of Christ's being shows itself to-day in negative rather than positive ways. To its subtle influence is traceable the capital defect of modern presentations of Christ, namely, that they make no appeal to the outsider. Christ is proclaimed as the solution of moral, social and industrial problems. As a rule in such cases the name "Christ" is used as a synonym for Christian principles.

Such appeals are addressed to the head; they do not touch the heart and fire the imagination; they do not kindle that personal devotion to the Man Christ Jesus which has always been the dynamic of the faith. The historic Christ is not presented in a way that would appeal to the unconvinced. Christian teaching is becoming more and more esoteric.

In the language of Christology, a diphysite Christ is not preached.

His human nature is kept in the background. It is not portrayed in arresting colours. If the apostles and apostolic men had preached the impersonal redeemer of modern religious thought, they would never have won the world for Christ. Their imaginations and lives were fired by contact with a Man of flesh and blood. So they presented a Christ whose true humanity appealed to His fellow-men. They showed the gospel picture to an unbelieving world, and the world responded to its appeal.