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History of the Christian Church — Topic 5

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History of the Christian Church — Topic 5

Apollinarianism

Apollinarius (or Apollinaris) of Laodicea in Syria (c. 310 - c. 390) was the son of Apollinarius the Elder, a grammarian of Beirut. Both were very active and quite brilliant teachers; when Julian the Apostate (r. 361-363) legislated the end of Christian teaching and a return to the pagan classics, they wrote much of the Bible using classical literary forms (verse, dialogue, tragedy, etc.).1

Many extensive works were written by Apollinarius of Laodicea, including a 30-volume refutation of Porphyry’s 15-volume work called Against the Christians. In his prime, before he began promoting his Christological speculations, he was considered a pillar of Orthodoxy; G. L. Prestige says that in around the year 362 he led St. Basil the Great “to a full appreciation of the Nicene faith” (Fathers and Heretics, p. 98). He was one of St. Athanasios the Great’s closest old friends; they held lengthy correspondence, most of which is lost. He wrote a Detailed Confession of Faith, and many OT and NT commentaries. Ironically, he was known as an ardent attacker of heresies, writing against Origenism, Sabellianism, Marcellus, Macedonianism, and Eunomianism. He also wrote against Diodore of Tarsus (died c. 390), who was a priest in Antioch in the early 370s, becoming Bishop of Tarsus in 378.

It is mainly in reaction to the Christological speculations of Diodore of Tarsus that Apollinarius worked out his opposing system. Like St. Lucian of Antioch and Eustathios of Antioch, Diodore began his Christology with the historical Jesus, and so he emphasized Christ’s full humanity, but to such an extent and in such a way that he tended “to harden the two aspects of His Person into two separate individuals, and so paved the way to the Nestorian controversies of the next century” (Prestige, p. 100; my emphasis). It was probably in the polemical exchange of views between Diodore and Apollinarius, “who must have known one another quite well,” that both of their approaches became polarized (Prestige, p. 100)

In reaction to Diodore, and also against lingering Arianism, Apollinarius emphasizes the deity of Christ. He very properly begins his Christology with the ever-existent, pre-eternal Word of God, the Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity; and he is very clear, as was St. Athanasios, that Jesus Christ is this same pre-eternal, ever-existent Word of God, homoousios with the Father, Who must be fully God in order to save man from sin, death, and the Devil. Against Diodore, he is very clear that in Christ there only can be one center of being (i.e., hypostasis) – the Word of God, and that it is wrong to speak of His humanity as somehow having an existence separate from the Word.

But while being very correct on Who Christ is, Apollinarius falls into error when he speculates on how Christ is both God and Man. To try to explain this ineffable mystery – which had certainly not been clearly defined as yet by the Church – he declares that the Divine Logos must take the place of a human mind/spirit in Jesus Christ. Using a quite rigid tripartite anthropology – that in each man there is body, soul, and spirit (cf. I Thess. 5:23 – “May your spirit, soul, and body be preserved sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”), he says that Christ had a human body and soul (meaning the juch alogos - the animating force, shared by all the animals), but not a spirit (nous, pneuma, juch logikh). He emphasizes that St. John 1:14 says that “the Word became flesh [sarx],” not “the Word became man.”

But his speculations conflict with the teaching of many theologians of the fourth century, including St. Athanasios, who around the year 360 approved the statement that The body possessed by the Savior did not lack either soul or sense or intelligence; it is impossible, when the Lord for our sake became man, that His body should have lacked intelligence; in the Word Himself salvation was effected not of the body only, but also of the soul (Prestige, p. 106).

Interestingly, at about this same time, St. Athanasios himself had written something very similar in his Epistle to Epictetus, which Apollinaris had recommended to St. Basil!

To this novel, however well-intentioned, Christology of Apollinarius, St. Gregory the Theologian, the Church Father who does the most to expose and refute the error of Apollinarianism, justly replied that the word sarx in St. John 1.14, by the literary device known as synecdoche (in which the whole of something is designated by a part of it; for example, saying “Here come the Red Hats!” as the Phillies take the field), refers to the whole of human nature. Christ does not just take on human flesh plus the soul (which for Apollinarius is only the animating principle), but He takes on all of human nature – body, soul, and mind/spirit – in order to truly be one of us (Heb. 2:17), and in order to save, sanctify, and deify every aspect of human nature. As Gregory declares, “What has not been assumed has not been healed/saved.” This statement, one of the great classic declarations in all the writings of the Church Fathers, in itself demolishes Apollinarianism – especially when we consider that it is precisely the human mind that needs healing and saving, since it is only with his mind that man sins!

For Apollinarius, however, the human mind was too fallen, too prone to sin, to ever have been assumed by the pre-eternal Word of God; as he asserted in about 375 (when he was on the point of his rupture with the Church), “The Word became flesh without assuming a human mind; a human mind is subject to change and is the captive of filthy imaginations; but He was a divine mind, changeless and heavenly” (Epistle to Diocaes.2; Prestige, p. 111). He also baldly stated, “Every man is a part of the world, and no part of the world takes away the sin of the world, under which the world itself lies; but Christ does take it away, therefore Christ is not a man” (anaceph.2; quoted by Prestige, pp. 111-112).

So it is very obvious that Apollinarius was denying the completeness and genuineness of Christ’s humanity. In his scheme, Christ lacks the highest element in human nature – the rational mind. This means that Christ was never really tempted, that He never really entered fully into the human experience in this world (denying Heb. 4:15 – He was “in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin”). And it means that the human mind is not redeemed.

With some exaggeration, G. L. Prestige highly acclaims Apollinarius’s positive contributions to Christology, saying they far outweigh his mistakes:

It is the supreme merit of Apollinaris that he plotted the right course by insisting on the unity of Christ’s Person. In doing this, he was cutting across the lines into which the whole thought of his day was falling. The tendency everywhere [especially seen in Diodore of Tarsus] was to fix attention on the deity of Christ and His humanity separately… .

In the main, Apollinaris was magnificently right. Jesus Christ was God and was doing God’s work; and the fact that He did it is more important than the question how… . Apollinaris devoted his life and even sacrificed his orthodoxy to the effort of defending this central and vital truth of the Gospel. He was no pagan-hearted logician, no speculator in intellectual stocks and shares, no hierophant of mystical obstinacy. He expounded with clearer penetration than anyone before him the precise form of doctrine necessary in his day, and indeed for all time, to set forth the truth and absolute deity of God the Son; and he first saw the greatness of the need for such a doctrine of Christ’s incarnation as should proclaim the truth of that deity in the sphere of Christ’s redemptive work and under the human form of His humiliation. Apollinaris in sober fact conferred far greater advantages on theology by his splendid orthodoxy than he caused damage by his tragic heresy (Prestige, pp. 116-117).

The real tragedy for Apollinaris was his rejection of the Church’s judgment on his theology. A council in Rome condemned his errors in 374,2 but instead of accepting this verdict, he presses on with his views. He wins a bishop named Vitalis to his side, and together they break communion with the Church and establish their own alternate hierarchy. At the instigation of St. Basil the Great, another council in Rome condemns Apollinarius, and shortly afterwards, in 379, a council in Antioch also does so. Finally, the Second Ecumenical Council condemns the heresy “of the Apollinarians” (Canon I), and Apollinarian public worship is outlawed by the Emperor. Spurning the judgment of even this major council, Apollinarius remained outside the Church until his death around the year 390.

  • Macedonianism
    • Apollinarianism
    • Second Ecumenical Council

Macedonianism

Valens rules the Eastern half of the empire from 364 to 378. He continues Emperor Constantius’s position in supporting the semi-Arians. His wife influences him to support the Arian Eudoxios, Archbishop of Constantinople, and then his more moderate but still Arian successor, Archbishop Demophilos (r. 370-380). But thanks much to the monumental labors on behalf of Nicene Orthodoxy by St. Athanasios the Great, the general tide in the East is gradually and steadily moving towards support of the Nicene Definition.

Macedonianism

Meanwhile, another heresy has arisen in the East. Archbishop Macedonius of Constantinople (r. 342-346 and 351-360) leads a group which fully affirms the homoousion of the Father and the Son, but they deny the full deity of the Holy Spirit. (We recall that at Nicea, the only reference to the Holy Spirit in the Creed promulgated there is “And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit.”) These people come to be known as Pneumatomachians (“Fighters against the Spirit”), or Macedonians, after their leader, Archbishop Macedonius.3

St. Basil the Great will prove to be the great champion of the Spirit in the fight against the Macedonians. In 370 he is elected as bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, and gradually and carefully he gathers a solid Nicene party in his area. He is reluctant to openly and dramatically espouse Nicene theology because of the Arian (or at least, semi-Arian) Emperor, Valens.

At the time of Holy Theophany in 372, Emperor Valens comes to Caesarea for a visit. When he indicates his desire to attend the Divine Liturgy and receive the Holy Eucharist, St. Basil has a very difficult decision to make! Will he commune the Emperor whom he knows holds a heretical understanding about Christ? Feeling that he is not strong enough politically to refuse the Emperor, and not wanting to risk an abrupt halt to all the delicate work he is doing in support of the Nicene Definition, St. Basil chooses not to deny the Chalice to the Emperor. This upsets the more rigorist and outspoken of the Nicene adherents, but Basil is convinced that this hopefully one-time act of oikonomia is necessary at this point. He probably recalled Christ’s words, “Be wise as serpents …” (Matt. 10:16).

By 375 he is more securely established in his see, and he has divided up his territory into an increased number of bishoprics, in order to increase the number of Nicene bishops. This explains how his younger brother Gregory comes to be bishop of the tiny town of Nyssa, and his best friend, Gregory the Theologian, bishop of Sasima.4 And it is at this time that he writes On the Holy Spirit, his classic work defending the deity of the Holy Spirit. In addition to referring over and over again to the Holy Scriptures in this work, he also turns to the sacramental and liturgical traditions of the Church, especially the Trinitarian baptismal formula and the Trinitarian doxology.

In going beyond the confines of the written Word, he talks about the Church’s many unwritten traditions – which he claims are as vital as the ones specifically written in the Scriptures:

Concerning the teachings of the Church, whether publicly proclaimed (kerygma) or reserved to members of the household of faith (dogmata), we have received some from written sources, while others have been given to us secretly, through apostolic tradition. Both sources have equal force in true religion. No one would deny either source – no one, at any rate, who is even slightly familiar with the ordinances of the Church. If we attacked unwritten customs, claiming them to be of little importance, we would fatally mutilate the Gospel, no matter what our intentions – or rather, we would reduce the Gospel teachings to bare words.

For instance (to take the first and most common example), where is the written teaching that we should sign with the sign of the Cross those who, trusting in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, are to be enrolled as catechumens? Which book teaches us to pray facing the East? Have any saints left for us in writing the words to be used in the invocation over the Eucharistic bread and the cup of blessing? As everyone knows, we are not content in the Liturgy simply to recite the words recorded by St. Paul or the Gospels, but we add other words both before and after, words of great importance for this mystery. We have received these words from unwritten teaching. We bless baptismal water and the oil for chrismation as well as the candidate approaching the font. By what written authority do we do this, if not from secret and mystical tradition? Even beyond blessing the oil, what written command do we have [about what] to anoint with it? What about baptizing a man with three immersions, or other baptismal rites, such as the renunciation of Satan and his angels?

Are not all these things found in unpublished and unwritten teachings, which our fathers guarded in silence, safe from meddling and petty curiosity? They had learned their lesson well; reverence for the mysteries is best encouraged by silence. The uninitiated were not even allowed to be present at the mysteries; how could you expect these teachings to be paraded about in public documents? (On the Holy Spirit.27 (part 66), pp. 98-99 in the St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press edition; my emphasis).

He establishes the fully deity of the Holy Spirit by showing from the Scriptures and from the worship of the Church that the Spirit does all the things that only God can do, and that He is believed in and worshiped by the Church as God. He says things like “the Spirit is the essence of life and divine sanctification” (ch. 18 [part 46]; p. 73), and “the Spirit partakes of the fullness of divinity” (ibid.).

But it is extremely interesting that he does not ever come right out and say “the Spirit is God,” or that the Spirit is homoousios with the Father and the Son – even though all his argumentation leads inescapably to such conclusions. This was due to his great pastoral concern for the Macedonians and his eagerness to win them to a proper understanding of the Holy Spirit – as well as his sensitivity to the political situation, with the semi-Arian Valens still on the throne. Hence, he carefully avoided such blunt, “red-flag” language which he was afraid would drive them away, yet all the while drawing them to the proper understanding. Please see the excerpt from Johannes Quasten’s Patrology, vol. III, p. 231 (in your packet of Hand-outs for the course) for the words of St. Gregory the Theologian in defense of his best friend’s actions on this score: “begging as a favor from the Spirit Himself and His earnest champions, that they would not be annoyed at his oikonomia, nor by clinging to a single expression, ruin the whole cause, from an uncompromising temper, at a crisis when [the true] religion was in peril.”

This remarkable pastoral and theological oikonomia on St. Basil’s part will be maintained by the Fathers at the Second Ecumenical Council. For these Fathers, in composing the paragraph in the Nicene Creed on the Holy Spirit – which they added to the Creed in light of the challenge of the Macedonians – also refrained from saying “the Holy Spirit is God.” Neither did they say “the Spirit is homoousios with the Father and the Son” – which would have been totally justified in light of the language used at Nicea in reference to the Son. Rather, they simply declared:

“And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, Who spoke by the Prophets.”5

The Second Council also included the Macedonians – calling them the Pneumatomachi – in the list of heresies anathematized in Canon I.

Second Ecumenical Council

In August of 378, Emperor Valens dies at the battle of Adrianopolis against the Goths, and the son of a very successful Spanish general is named by the Western Emperor Gratian to be the emperor in the East.6 This man, a staunch supporter of Nicene Orthodoxy, will come to be known as St. Theodosius the Great.

In 379, the Nicene party in Constantinople invites St. Gregory the Theologian to come preach against Arianism. Upon his arrival in the capital city, he finds every church in the hands of Arians. Undeterred, he takes up preaching in a house-church called the Church of the Anastasis, and the truthfulness and power of his eloquence soon turns the tide against the Arians.

Late in the year 380, Theodosius arrives in Constantinople. To bring a final end to Arianism, and to address the heresies of the Macedonians and Apollinarians, he very quickly understands the need to call another general council. He asks Bp. Meletius of Antioch to preside at the council, which opens in May of 381 in Constantinople.

The Second Ecumenical Council

One very important administrative matter the council must address is the vacancy in the archbishopric of Constantinople, since the Arian Archbishop Demophilos “had withdrawn before the Theodosian wind of change” (Chadwick, The Early Church, p. 150); St. Gregory the Theologian was selected.

Soon afterwards, Bp. Meletius dies during the council, which brings Gregory to the presidency of the Council. In order to end the schism in the Church in Antioch, he advises that Meletius’s successor be Paulinus, leader of the Eustathian line which has continued since Bp. Eustathius was driven from the city by the Arians back in 330. Despite Rome’s continued strong support for the Eustathian party, Gregory’s suggestion is rejected by the Council. Then his own legitimacy as archbishop of Constantinople is challenged by his opponents, who say that in light of his previous consecration as bishop of Sasima, his being made archbishop of Constantinople violated Canon 15 at Nicea. Recognizing that he is just not cut out for dealing with such ecclesiastical politics, the poet-theologian retires from the council in disgust, declaring “no more will I be among the cawing cranes.” (He returns to his country estate in Cappadocia to live out his days there.)

Instead of Paulinus, one of Meletius’s priests, named Flavian, is selected as the new bishop of Antioch; he will later ordain St. John Chrysostom to the priesthood. (Rome will continue to reject the legitimacy of Archbishop Flavian and his line until St. John Chrysostom, as Archbishop of Constantinople from 398 to 404, convinces Rome to recognize that line, which greatly helps to bring the schism in the Antiochian Church to an end.)

A distinguished government official named Nectarios is chosen to succeed Gregory as Archbishopric of Constantinople, even though he is not even baptized. But he had no associations with any of the disputing ecclesiastical parties, which added to his attractiveness as a candidate to be the new Archbishop. As with St. Ambrose of Milan in 374, he is quickly baptized and ordained as deacon, then priest, and then bishop.

To put an end to Arianism, the Council affirms the Creed of Nicea; and as mentioned above, it adds the paragraph on the Holy Spirit to address the Macedonian heresy. It is interesting that the Creed of Nicea is not altered to address Apollinarianism; it will be the Council of Chalcedon in 451 (repeating language from the Formulary of Peace in 433) which will specify that “the Lord Jesus Christ is … very God and very man, of a reasonable [i.e., rational] soul and body” (NPNF, second series, vol. XIV, p. 264; my emphasis). So here again we see the remarkable conciliatory spirit of this Council.

Of the seven canons promulgated by this Council, three are particularly noteworthy:

Canon II has direct relevance for the question of the jurisdictional claims of the Roman Papacy: “The bishops are not to go beyond their dioceses to churches lying outside their bounds, nor bring confusion on the churches; but let the Bishop of Alexandria, according to the canons, alone administer the affairs of Egypt; and let the bishops of the East manage the East alone, … and let the bishops of the Asian Diocese administer the Asian affairs only; and the Pontic bishops only Pontic matters; and the Thracian bishops only Thracian affairs. And let not bishops go beyond their dioceses for ordination or any other ecclesiastical ministrations, unless they be invited. And the aforesaid canon concerning dioceses being observed, it is evident that the synod of every province will administer [only] the affairs of that particular province, as was decreed at Nicea [in Canon VI]” (NPNF, 2, XIV, pp. 176-177).

Canon III also disturbs Rome: “The Bishop of Constantinople, however, shall have the prerogative of honour after the Bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is New Rome” (ibid., p. 178).

Rome is upset by this canon because it strongly implies that the ecclesiastical rank of the Church in a particular city depends on the political status of that city; on this basis, she wonders, what is to prevent Constantinople from one day calling herself the first among equals? Rome does not actually accept this canon until the early 13th century, under Pope Innocent III, when Constantinople is in the hands of Latin Crusaders!

This canon also rankles Alexandria, which is used to being second after Rome; she resents this “demotion” to third place.

Canon VII is very relevant regarding the question of how converts from the various schismatic and heretical groups are to be received by the Church: “Arians, and Macedonians, and Sabbatians, and Novatians, who call themselves Cathari or Aristeri, and Quarto-decimans or Tetradites, and Apollinarians, we receive, upon their giving a written renunciation [of their errors] and anathematize every heresy which is not in accordance with the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church of God. Thereupon, they are first sealed or anointed with the holy oil upon the forehead, eyes, nostrils, mouth, and ears; and when we seal them, we say, ‘The Seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.’ But Eunomians, who are baptized with only one immersion, and Montanists, who are here called Phrygians, and Sabellians, who teach the identity of the Father and Son, and do sundry other mischievous things, and [the partisans of] all other heresies … we baptize” (ibid., p. 185; this canon is very much in accord with Canons 8 and 19 at Nicea. Note that even the Arians, who have caused the Church incalculable grief and anguish for the last 60 years, are treated in this more lenient way).

Arianism rather soon dies out within the Empire. But it lives on among the Goths, who were converted to Christianity by Arian missionaries, led by Bp. Ulfila (c. 311-383) who translates the Bible into the Gothic language; he was consecrated as a missionary bishop by Bp. Eusebius of Nicomedia in 341. In 589 the Council of Toledo in Spain will insert the Filioque clause into the Nicene Creed in order to further emphasize the deity of the Son in the face of continuing Arianism among the Goths in Spain.7

MACEDONIANISM, APOLLINARIANISM, AND THE SECOND ECUMENICAL COUNCIL

Editorial Footnotes

Flashcards

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Footnotes

  1. This story comes from the 5th-century historians Socrates Scholasticus and Sozomen, who report that the two Apollinarii recast Scripture into Homeric epic, Platonic dialogue, Pindaric odes, and tragedy after Julian’s 362 school edict barred Christians from teaching the classics. Modern scholars treat the account with considerable skepticism: no fragments of these works survive, the chronology is tight (Julian’s edict and death fall within roughly 362–363), and the tale has the shape of an edifying anecdote rather than documented fact. ↩

  2. The dating and sequence of the Roman synods against Apollinarianism is uncertain in the sources, which variously give 374, 375, 377, and 378. The most commonly cited condemnation of Apollinarius’s teaching at Rome under Pope Damasus is dated to 377; the subsequent condemnation at Antioch in 379 is, by contrast, firmly dated. ↩

  3. The attribution of the Pneumatomachian (“Spirit-fighting”) party to Macedonius is historically doubtful. Macedonius was a Homoiousian (semi-Arian) deposed from Constantinople in 360 and likely dead by c. 362, whereas the controversy over the Spirit’s divinity crystallized in the 370s. The identification of him as the sect’s founder derives from later heresiological tradition (as early as Didymus the Blind, c. 380), and most modern historians regard “Macedonian” as a convenient label rather than evidence that Macedonius personally led or originated the movement. ↩

  4. Both consecrations in fact took place in 372, not “by 375.” They arose from Basil’s jurisdictional conflict with Anthimus of Tyana after Valens divided Cappadocia into two provinces (371/372): Basil installed his brother Gregory at Nyssa and his friend Gregory of Nazianzus at the contested border town of Sasima to shore up his ecclesiastical territory. ↩

  5. The text here (correctly for the Orthodox tradition) treats this expanded creed as the work of the 381 council. Modern scholarship notes a genuine complication: this “Niceno-Constantinopolitan” Creed is nowhere quoted or attributed to the Council of Constantinople in any source between 381 and the Council of Chalcedon (451), where it first appears under that name. J. N. D. Kelly and others hold it is nonetheless a plausible conciliar product, but its precise relationship to the 381 council remains debated. ↩

  6. Theodosius was not proclaimed emperor in 378 itself; Gratian elevated him to Augustus on 19 January 379, several months after Valens’s death at Adrianople (9 August 378). His father, Theodosius the Elder, was a prominent magister militum; the family came from Hispania (modern Spain). ↩

  7. The Third Council of Toledo (589), at which the Visigothic king Reccared renounced Arianism, is traditionally cited as the first insertion of the Filioque into the recited Creed. Scholars debate the textual history, however: it is contested whether the clause stood in the creed as actually promulgated in 589 or was introduced into the Spanish creedal text somewhat later, and the phrase’s wider liturgical adoption in the Latin West unfolded gradually over subsequent centuries. ↩

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