Monophysitism Past and Present Part 7

It is not easy to bridge the centuries and regain the apostles'

standpoint, but until it is done the church's message will lack inspiration. The phrase "the historic Christ" is commonly used, as if it covered the whole ground. It is certainly serviceable as a protest against a bare logos theory of the incarnation, but in itself it is not adequate. What requires emphasis is the humanity of the historic Christ. Many Christian teachers purposely withhold this emphasis from fear of playing into the hands of Arians and Nestorians. No doubt if pressed they would give intellectual a.s.sent to the dogma of the two natures, but they shrink from following it out to its consequences.

There is a widespread feeling that it is irreverent to dwell on the fact that Christ was a real man. A firm grasp of catholic Christology in its entirety is the cure for this squeamishness. To obscure the fact of His Manhood is not the true reply to a denial of His Deity. A true presentation of Christ must give full weight to the facts that He had a human body, human mind, human feelings and human will, that His body was in s.p.a.ce normally subject to physical law, that His consciousness and subconsciousness conformed to psychic law. Wherever a denial of these facts is found, there is monophysitism. Wherever they are obscured or neglected, there are monophysite tendencies.

INDIFFERENCE TO CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS--A CLa.s.sICAL COMPARISON

Failure to appreciate the real humanity of Christ's life results in comparative indifference to the tragedy of His death. Monophysitism in undermining belief in the reality of Christ's manhood is weakening sympathy with His sufferings. Calvary like Bethlehem has lost much of its appeal. A cla.s.sical comparison will ill.u.s.trate this fact. Plato's account of Socrates' last hour in the prison and of his drinking the hemlock is, I imagine, to many educated men far more moving than the story of the Pa.s.sion and Death of Christ. There is a curious similarity in the two tragedies that invites attention and comparison.

Both sufferers were heroes and moral reformers, the victims of mistaken zeal on the part of religious authority. Socrates died in a ripe age with his life work accomplished. Jesus was cut off in His prime.

Socrates' last hours were tranquil and his pa.s.sing quick and easy.

Jesus after shame and torture died a lingering death. The dysthanasia of Jesus should, one would opine, make a stronger appeal to men's sympathies than does the euthanasia of Socrates. Yet on the whole the reverse is the case. The difference in the respective styles of the two narratives does not give the whole explanation. It is true that the Phaedo is a work of fine art while the gospel story is a plain statement of fact. The reason, however, for the difference in appeal goes deeper than literary style. The reader of the Phaedo puts himself into the place of Socrates and suffers with him. As we read the Pa.s.sion of Christ there rises a barrier between us and the divine sufferer. Unconsciously we say to ourselves, "Christ suffered, of course, but He did not suffer as we should have suffered in His place.

His were not the real sufferings of a real man."

If the pa.s.sion of Christ and that of Socrates were weighed in the same balances, there would be less indifference to-day to the gospel story.

Were Christ the Man realised as such, visualised, as other great men of history are visualised, among his followers, the hero wors.h.i.+p that inspired the early church would revive. What makes Christians indifferent to Christ's sufferings is not the lapse of centuries nor weakness of imagination but a subconscious monophysitism. There is to most minds a haze of unreality overhanging the accounts of His life and death. They forget that He shared human experience to the full. They think of Him as doing things _rheidios_ like the Homeric G.o.ds. In point of fact, His great results were achieved only after long laborious exertion. His was a life of strenuous human activity, physical and mental. Even His miracles were accompanied by a physical throb of sympathy; virtue went out of Him. Redemption made it necessary. Enthusiastic devotion to a person must be grounded in community of experience. It is the human touches in the drama of Christ's life that make the most powerful appeal to mankind. Yet the human element is obscured, as a rule, in modern presentations of the gospel. For spiritual minds it is comparatively easy to apprehend a divine Christ. To apprehend a human Christ makes a larger call on their imagination and their sympathy. Spiritual men are naturally monophysite in their thinking. They shrink from the mental effort that diphysitism demands. Their attention is focussed on Christ's superiority to human limitations. They scarcely see the miracle of the human, and thus they miss the import of the divine miracle. In the atmosphere of monophysitism mysticism thrives, but devotion decays. We may instance the almost total disappearance of the crusading spirit.

The Christ to whom our thoughts usually turn is an omnipresent ideal with no historical or local a.s.sociations. His birth-place and His country evoke only a lukewarm sentiment. The church's year is neglected. The historical facts of Christ's life are often regarded as of only minor importance. Piety used to consist in personal loyalty to the Founder of a universal religion; it is now considered synonymous with obedience to the "golden rule."

TO ATTRIBUTE OMNISCIENCE TO CHRIST'S HUMAN NATURE IS MONOPHYSITISM

Within recent times the question as to the limitation of Christ's knowledge was hotly debated. That debate showed how much uncertainty on Christological questions exists and how strong monophysite opinion still is. In spite of Christ's own _dicta_, in spite of the dogma of two natures, denial of the limitation was widespread and persistent.

To many devout minds it seems impious to speak of Christ's ignorance.

This is a case in which the Chalcedonian definition is an invaluable guide. If one brings to an examination of Christ's nature the preconceived notion of His omniscience, the doctrine of the limitation of His knowledge seems an outrage on belief; but if one approaches the question with the orthodox formula in mind, one is prepared to find that His cognitive faculties were perfectly human and humanly perfect.

So we find it. His knowledge and His faculties of knowledge on the lower plane of His experience were essentially the same as ours. He thought in our categories. He used our organon, perfect of its kind, but still a human organon. As man, inevitably, He had thoughts uncognised; and such a mental state we call "ignorance." His mind pa.s.sed through stages of development as ours does. Education widened His horizon, strengthened His faculties, and increased His knowledge.

Advance in knowledge implies a prior state of relative ignorance. The word "ignorance" as applied to Christ sounds very terrible; but investigation of its meaning robs it of its terrors. We use the word in two senses. On the one hand it may mean the absence of a thought, its absolute non-presence in consciousness. On the other it may mean thought unrelated to experience, one whose implications are not or cannot be fully deduced, in fact, the incomplete cognition of an idea.

In neither case does it involve imperfection in the instrument or moral fault. On the contrary ignorance is a mark of the normal in cognition.

If ignorance and limitation of knowledge were not found in Christ, we should be forced to agree with Apollinaris that the divine Logos had superseded His human intellect.

Ignorance in so far as it is a positive attribute is far from being a mark of imperfection. It is a true paradox that ignorance like obliviscence forms part of the process of human cognising. Probably in the truth of things memory is of the essence of mind. Thoughts naturally and spontaneously reproduce themselves. The past of experience tends automatically to carry forward into the present. The function of the brain then, or of a mental faculty intimately co-operating with the brain is to discriminate, to sift and select, to prolong into present consciousness what is of importance for action and to relegate the irrelevant to partial or total oblivion. From this psychological standpoint ignorance and obliviscence are seen to be achievements of the intellect. The presence of all facts in a human consciousness is unthinkable. If it were possible, it would paralyse action. If we exempt Christ from the law of ignorance and obliviscence, we _ipso facto_ dehumanise his cognition. When we say that Jesus was ignorant of much scientific truth, or that his prescience was limited, we do not compromise His dignity. We simply a.s.sert the naturalness of His intellect and the true humanity of that element of His nature. To do otherwise, to claim omniscience for His human intellect is gross monophysitism. His knowledge was deeper, surer, more penetrating than ours, because the light of His divine intuition streamed through the veil of sense and illumined the lower phases of intelligence. This is an instance of the _communicatio idiomatum_. The properties of the two natures act and react upon one another. But we must make the distinction of natures our starting-point, or fusion will take place. There must be _idiomata_ first, or the _communicatio_ is meaningless.

THE PRESENT EXISTENCE OF CHRIST'S HUMAN NATURE

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 ent.i.ty 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 a.s.sociated. 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 a.s.sumption 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 att.i.tude, or rather a change of att.i.tude, 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 a.s.sumption 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 subst.i.tute 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 G.o.d's dealings with men; there is nothing purposeless, nothing otiose in G.o.d'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 a.s.sume, and, conversely, that what He a.s.sumed He redeemed. He a.s.sumed 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 const.i.tutes 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 const.i.tuents 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sumed 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 Pa.s.sion to the incarnation. The Pa.s.sion 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 Pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sumed 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 inst.i.tutional 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 a.s.sociates its piety with the historic Christ, but actually it wors.h.i.+ps 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 a.s.sumption of human nature into the a.s.sumption of a t.i.tle.

CHRISTOLOGY A DETERMINANT OF SACRAMENTAL THOUGHT

Errors in sacramental teaching necessarily accompany misconceptions of the person of Christ. The incarnation is a cosmic sacrament, the meeting-point of divine and human, and the sacraments of the church are types of the vaster mystery. In both type and ant.i.type it is all important to give due weight to divine and human, and not to exalt one element at the expense of the other. Those who undervalue the human nature of Christ are disposed to undervalue the outward sign in the sacraments. Not appreciating the hypostatic union of divine with human, they misunderstand the sacramental union of the same elements.

Blind to the significance of Christ's humanity in the economy of redemption, they fail to see how matter can be the channel of sacramental grace. Yet the discipline of faith is the same in both cases. The Christian enterprise is not merely to believe in the divine, but to believe in the divine manifested in the human.

There are two divergent, almost opposing, schools of sacramental teaching, both of which have inherited the spirit of monophysitism.

Both are instances of sacramental monism. First, there are those who identify the outward signs and the inward grace; second, those to whom the inward grace is everything and the outward sign nothing. Both schools of thought destroy the nature of a sacrament. The radical error of both consists in undervaluing the human and material. In the first case the error takes the form of the transubstantiation doctrine, which is exactly parallel to the extreme form of Eutychianism.

According to Eutyches, the human nature of Christ was absorbed into the divine and lost there; the truth of His being was the divine personality; the human element was only an appearance. Similarly the transubstantiation theory conceives the mutation of the _substance_ of the material elements and the loss of their proper nature; the appearance of reality that the _accidents_ possess is an illusion of the senses. We may note in pa.s.sing that the opposite error to transubstantiation finds its Christological parallel in Nestorianism.

Socinianism which separates symbol from sacramental grace is sacramental dualism, as Nestorianism is Christological dualism. Both abandon a vital unity of divine and human. The pietistic or mystical view of the sacraments does so too, but in a different way. This second form of sacramental monism has much in common with the doctrine of one nature. To the pietist the divine seems all important, and the material no help, but rather a hindrance to the spiritual life. The faith of the individual to him is the seat of the efficacy of the sacraments; he regards matter as unreal if not sinful, and in either case unworthy to be a channel of divine grace. Echo after echo of monophysite thought can be caught here. The surest way to combat sacramental errors on both sides is a clear and definite statement of the catholic doctrine of Christology.

NEED OF A MENTAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE HUMAN NATURE OF CHRIST

As the interval of time widens, separating Christians from the human life of their G.o.d, the more urgent becomes the obligation to put forth a constructive effort of the historical imagination. The attempt to keep that memory green grows harder and harder as the centuries pa.s.s; but Christians must make it; otherwise the historical character of their religion will perish. There need be no fear that the interests of spiritual religion will suffer. Amongst moderns the danger of idealising the human is greater than that of humanising the divine. An intelligent appreciation of Christ's human life draws out love and kindles reverence towards the divine personality who condescended to the level of mankind. We may point by way of ill.u.s.tration to the effect of biblical criticism. Christians of a previous generation dreaded the touch of criticism. They thought it profanation. They refused to admit any human element in the bible. Criticism, however, had its way. Bibliolatry had to go. The result is that the bible is a living book to us to-day. In spite of the fears of the devout there was little to lose and much to gain by recognising the human element in the bible. As with the written word, so with the living Word. Without a recognition of the human element in His being, a full a.s.similation of His teaching and an intimate perception of His real presence are unattainable. If this recognition be accorded, the great past will live again in the present. Hostile critics study the life and character of Christ and the records of them with a view to proving that He was merely man. Believers may adopt their method with a different object. They may undertake the same study in order to comprehend the wonder of the Man, and so rise to some conception of the wonder of the G.o.d. The gospels are read mainly as a handbook of devotion; they should be studied as the biography of a hero. The face-value of its incidents is often neglected, while the reader seeks allegorical and mystical interpretations. To form a mental picture of Christ in His environment, to read ourselves back into His world and then into His ways of thought, such efforts are more than ever needed to-day, and they are more than ever absent. Historic sense and imagination should be allowed to play upon the recorded acts and sayings of Jesus, until a great temple to His memory rises in the high places of the mind, dominating thence the whole intellectual and moral life. Such an enterprise would infuse life and meaning into the Christological formula, and would effect, so to speak, a reconstruction of the human nature of the historic Christ. The Christian's att.i.tude towards the Man Christ Jesus is the "acid test" of the sincerity of his faith. No one can bring intellectual difficulties to a being to whom cognising was a foreign process, nor moral difficulties to one who knew no conflict of wills, nor sorrows to one "all breathing human pa.s.sion far above." If we picture the ideal of all mankind as thinking our thoughts, willing as we will, feeling as we feel, we are united to Him by an intellectual, moral and emotional bond of sympathy. Such a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Communion with such a Being leads the wors.h.i.+pper to the heart of the Christian religion.

THE END