Course:Carey HIST501/Project 1/Apollarianism/Apollinarianism

Imagine that you were one of the bishops or heretics being summoned by the Emperor to be present at the great church councils. You want to spend every effort to discover all the heresies flowing around the Church. As preparation for the class, you will collect background information of major heresies/controversies in the early Church include the following

Biographical information of key leader(s) of the heresy/controversy

The Christological theory and teaching of Apollinarianism (or in some sources shortened to Apollarianism) finds it's origin and it's title in one Apollinaris (Latin Apollinarius) the younger, Bishop of Laodoceia, who lived from 310 to 390 AD (possibly having died in 392.) Prior to his advancement of the theory that bears his name and his subsequent refusal to renounce it when firmly and formally refuted as being in error by the church on multiple occasions, Apollinarius is found to be a tremendous defender of and asset to the cause of Christianity and it's developing understanding of orthodoxy.

"Apollinarius...developed a solid reputation as a Christian theologian who supported Nicene orthodoxy and courageously defended the Christian faith during the time of Julian the Apostate....Apollinaris (Apolinarios) was a bishop of the ancient and prestigious church at Laodicea. He flourished in the latter half of the fourth century and was at first highly esteemed by men such as Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil the Great, and Saint Jerome, due to his classical and biblical learning, his defense of Christianity against paganism during the reign of Julian the Apostate, and his loyalty to the Nicene faith. He assisted his father, Apollinaris the Elder, in popularizing Christian ideas through Greek literary genres. Together they translated the Pentateuch into Greek hexameters, converted the first two books of Kings into an epic poem of 24 cantos, and expressed biblical stories through comedic and tragic dramas. Jerome credits him with many volumes on the scriptures, including two apologies on behalf of Christianity and a refutation of the Arian teacher Eunomius"

"Apollinaris denied the existence in Christ of a rational human soul, a position he took to combat Arianism. Excommunicated from the church for his views, Apollinaris was readmitted but in 346 excommunicated a second time. Nevertheless the Nicene congregation at Laodicea chose him as bishop (c. 361). Skilled in logic and Hebrew and a teacher of rhetoric, Apollinaris also lectured at Antioch c. 374."

Apollinaris died still convinced he was not in error and with a following right till death, though this dissipated shortly thereafter.

Time frame when the heresy “flourished”

As such a uniquely specific Christological heresy, Apollinarianism does not occupy an especially large swath of Christian history or attention unlike the more general Arianism (denying the uncreated divinity of Christ) and Docetism and like views (denying the humanity of Christ - Apollinarianism being very similar yet distinct, denying only a part of Christ's humanity, the "rational soul" which some hold to be synonymous with the intellect or mind). As such

"The precise time at which Apollinaris came forward with his heresy is uncertain. There are clearly two periods in the Apollinarist controversy. Up to 376, either because of his covert attitude or of the respect in which he was held, Apollinaris's name was never mentioned by his opponents, i.e. by individuals like Athanasius and Pope Damasus, or by councils like the Alexandrian (362), and the Roman (376). From this latter date it is open war. Two more Roman councils, 377 and 381, and a number of Fathers, plainly denounce and condemn as heretical the views of Apollinaris. He failed to submit even to the more solemn condemnation of the council of Constantinople, 381, whose first canon entered Apollinarianism on the list of heresies, and he died in his error, about 392. His following, at one time considerable in Constantinople, Syria, and Phoenicia, hardly survived him. Some few disciples, like Vitalis, Valentinus, Polemon, and Timothy, tried to perpetuate the error of the master and probably are responsible for the forgeries noticed above. The sect itself soon became extinct. Towards 416, many returned to the mother-Church, while the rest drifted away into Monophysitism."

While his name was never explicitly mentioned by his opponents or he branded a heretic prior to 376, the substance of this doctrine was well recognized before this date and the doctrine was first examined and condemned in the Synod of Alexandria in 362

"Apollinaris refused to recant his views and persisted in teaching them until his death. After this, his movement persisted for some time, but eventually faded. While some of his followers returned to orthodoxy, others would find a home in the later christological movements which addressed the problem he tried to solve: Monophysitism, Monothelitism, and Nestorianism. The Council of Chalcedon ultimately resolved the issue in 451, although Christians today still grapple with the seeming logical inconsistencies of the "mystery" of the Trinity and the Incarnation."

So while there is no inarguable timeline for Apollinarianism, there is nonetheless a fairly well defined window of time within which the public advancement and presence of the theory, teaching, and controversy most certainly transpired (nothing regarding Apollinarianism as a noteworthy contemporary issue appearing in written record before 362 or later than 451, with the years between 376 and 416 seeing the bulk of this movement's historical attention)

Context and Influences that gave birth to the heresy/controversy

1. Arianism

Numerous sources plainly state that Apollinarius was, to a great extent, reacting against Arianism. At the core of the Arian heresy was the assertion that even in the beginning Jesus was a created a being, not uncreated God the same as the Father.. These same sources as referenced above assert that Apollinarius was a firm defender of Christianity against Arianism, and a supporter of the Nicene faith, and that Apollinarius was "a close friend of Athanasius, champion against Arianism at Nicea" In retrospect it surely seems ironic that the council of Constantinople in 381 condemned both Apollinarianism and reaffirmed the decisions made at Nicea in condemnation of the very Arianism Apollinarius himself opposed so fervently. A lesson may be derived by some, to the effect that being opposed to what is heretical does not in itself make one's own beliefs orthodox simply by virtue of being opposite a particular heresy. Apollinarianism may well be thought of, at least in part, as an overreaction resulting in equal and opposite error. This is a pattern of causality one may read into church history, indeed all human history, in numerous places (example: Fundamentalism having overreacted to the point of error at times in response to Christian liberalism as widely acknowledged to originate with Schleiermacher, itself a movement reacting, to the point of error in retrospect, against the overly rationalized and non-experiential Christianity tracing back to the origins of the Protestant Reformation itself - which was a reaction against corruption within the Catholic Church, among other things....and so on, ad naseum). The church's reaction to and against Apollarianism itself yielded some notable fruit in Christian history, especially for such a short lived phenomenon.

2. Platonism/Platonic Worldview (also an influence of Gnosticism)

a) Platonic Trichotomy of Man

Particularly present and conspicuous as an influence to Apollinarius' Christology is his anthropology, his conception (and assumption) of what a human being was. Apollinarius subscribed to a Platonic trichotomy of the human creature (whether this was an examined belief or had never occurred to him to be one assumption among possible others we shall never know). This held that fundamentally human beings can be neatly divided into three constituent parts: the physical body (soma), the rational mind or intellect (nous), and the animating spirit (and this including the emotional part of us). Erickson curiously asserts that it's not clear whether Apollinarius was a dichotomist or a trichotomist and in fact writes as if he were a dichotomist, despite the vast majority of sources plainly understanding him in a trichotomist light. As shall be stated again later, Apollinarianism's central hypothesis is that Jesus had a normal human body and animating spirit, but did not have a human mind, this being replaced by the divine logos.

b) Platonic/Gnostic view of creation/the cosmos

The Platonic worldview is a quintessential one: that is, it postulates that there exist abstract objects, eternal and unchanging realities Plato called "forms". These forms have physical representations, but that these representations are always imperfect, the material always inferior to the immaterial, the spiritual, the quintessential.

3. "The Word became Flesh" - a very narrow reading of the Gospel of John

Apollinarius found a solution, at least he thought it one, to much of the logical difficulty of the deity and humanity of Jesus in a very particular reading of John 1:14 which says "the word became flesh" or "..was made flesh" or, especially fitting for Apollinarius' purposes, "the word took on flesh". In his understanding of what this scriptural description of the Incarnation meant to say, the word, the logos, "enfleshed" itself in the physical human body of Jesus and was animated by the same "life force" that distinguishes life from inanimate material, occupying the place or realm normally occupied by the human "rational spirit:" or "intellect". In other words, Jesus had the body of a man, the life and liveliness or vital force of a man, but the mind of God to the exclusion of the mind of a man. While the exclusion principle of particle physics (no two objects can be in the same place at the same time - more specifically that no two electrons in the same atom can have identical values for all four of their quantum numbers) is most obviously an anachronistic reference, one might see in Apollinarius' understanding of Christ's mind as needing to be divine or human but not both as necessitated by some artificially imposed exclusion principle of sorts:

"Two perfect beings with all their attributes, he argued, cannot be completely one, especially when one is infinite and purely spiritual while the other is finite and partly physical. They are at most a compound. To make them absolutely one is not unlike the description of demigods in Greek mythology. However, Apollinaris was careful to affirm that he accepted the Nicene faith, which forbade describing God the Son as anything less than the "same substance" with the Father."

4. A need to resolve apparent paradox - the Church's ongoing efforts at definitive Christology

Apollinaris appealed to the well-known Platonic division of human nature: body (sarx, soma), lower soul (psyche, halogos), spirit or mind (nous, pneuma, rational soul). Christ, he said, assumed a human body and a human lower soul, but his mind (or rational soul) was the mind of God. In other words, the Logos—the rational soul of God the Son—takes the place of the human mind in Jesus. In this way, God became the rational and spiritual center, the seat of self-consciousness and self-determination, in Jesus Christ. Though this formula, the Apollinaris sought to save Nicene Christianity from the logical paradox that so many have seen in it. At the same time he hoped to preserve the unity of Christ himself, seeing him not as two things (completely God and completely man at the same time) but one thing (a man with the mind of God)." - Bold emphasis added

It is also worth noting that the church's Christology was not yet well developed and so numerous contenders for an explanation of the nature of the divinity and humanity of Christ rose up around this time in history. Heresies (as later defined by consensus upon formal examination) helped the church articulate and clarify what it believed about Jesus.

In answering the challenge of Apollinaris, the orthodox Church Fathers of his day had not yet evolved the christological formulas promulgated by the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, which expressed that Christ's human and divine natures were equally present in his person, "without confusion or division."

5. An understanding of the human mind, or higher spirit/rational spirit, as being inherently sinful.

"Apollinaris' conscience would not allow him to affirm Christ's impeccability—his absolute sinlessness—except by affirming that the mind of Jesus' was completely identified with the Divine Logos.

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Central beliefs

As has been stated directly and indirectly and elaborated upon throughout the background information provided and referenced thusfar, Apollinarianism's central hypothesis is essentially that Jesus Christ was a man with the mind of God, specifically that Jesus had a normal human body and animating spirit/lower spirit (in Platonic thought), but did not have a human mind/rational spirit/intellect/higher spirit. Where an ordinary man would have this rational spirit, Jesus instead had the divine word, the Logos, the mind of God. This was necessitated according to Apollinarius for several reasons but primarily to do with a) logical consistency, b) the unity of Christ himself (to Apollinarius the idea that Jesus could be fully two different things at once was not only logically impossible but also robbing Christ of internal consistency and coherence and c) the perceived impossibility for one with the mind/rational soul of mortal man to not be inherently sinful or inadequate to save:

This is a more nuanced and subtle heresy than the heresies on either end of this spectrum of denial, with Arianism denying Jesus' full uncreated divinity on one hand and Docetism denying his humanity on the other. Yet it proved to be nearly immediately unsatisfying as an attempted resolution of Christian paradoxes to all but Apollinarius and his loyal following, and deemed no less erroneous in the end than either of these more obvious divergences from Orthodoxy, even as it explicitly sought to avoid their errors while addressing perceived shortcomings in accepted Christian explanations and descriptions of the relationship between the humanity and divinity of Jesus: it utterly failed to do what it's creator hoped to achieve with it.

Note that Jesus' humanity is not wholly denied, but rather contradicted or compromised: it may be something of an oversimplification but one could say that under this view Jesus was mostly human, even two-thirds human by literal interpretation. Apollinarius saw no problem with that. The implications and aftershocks of this much forgotten and short lived heresy are far reaching and will be explored further below.

Opponents to the heresy/controversy and/or church council which dealt with the heresy/controversy

Timeline of events

1. The doctrine itself is first examined and then condemned at the Synod of Alexandria in 362 - Apollinarius himself is not mentioned by name nor explicitly opposed, still being in apparently good standing and held in high regard
2. Much the same goes for the Roman council of 376 - the doctrine condemned, the man not condemned or identified by the doctrine.
3. Roman councils of 377 and 381, along with several church fathers, plainly condemn "the teachings of Apollinarius"
4. Pope Damasus officially condemns the doctrine, declaring all who subscribe to it anathema, at the council of Constantinope in 381, and the condemnation of this doctrine among other heresies was in the first act of the council, the first order of business deemed urgently in need of addressing.
5. Apollinarius dies in error in 392, having been excommunicated not once, but twice, having been restored only to persist in not repenting of his error.
6. By 416 his followers for all intents and purposes were no more, having either returned to orthodoxy or moved on to other schools of thought, especially monophytism.

Opposition began locally, from local contemporary bishops and in synods, but quickly advanced to involve the Pope and a full scale ecumenical council.

"Theodoret of Cyrrhus charged Apollinaris with confusing the persons of the Godhead, and with giving in to the earlier heretical ways of Sabellius. Basil accused him of abandoning the literal sense of the scripture, and taking up wholly with the allegorical sense."

Much moreso that these, however, two figures loom especially large in the written refutation and condemnation of Apollinarianism: Pope Damasus 1 and Gregory of Nazianzus. Some of their words and arguments survive today: The following condemnation of Apollinarism is found in the seventh anathema issued by Pope Damasus I at the Council of Rome of 381:

We pronounce anathema against them who say that the Word of God is in the human flesh in lieu and place of the human rational and intellective soul." For, the Word of God is the Son Himself. Neither did He come in the flesh to replace, but rather to assume and preserve from sin and save the rational and intellective soul of man.

Gregory of Nazianzus says:

"what has not been assumed cannot be restored" - meaning that if Jesus wasn't fully human and did not assume even a human mind, then He could not restore human beings fully. As Bruce Shelley interprets Gregory: "Only if he really became human did he rally save us.  If any part of what constitutes a human being was not taken up by him, that was not saved by him."

Gregory again stated

"“If any believe in Jesus Christ as a human being without human reason, they are the ones devoid of all reason, and unworthy of salvation.  For that which he has not taken up he has not saved.  He saved that which he joined to his divinity.  If only half of Adam had fallen, then it would be possible for Christ to take up and save only half.  But if the entire human nature fell, all of it must be united to the Word in order to be saved as a whole.”

The central issue by which Apollinarius was condemned was the necessity of a fully human "second Adam", and the conviction that Jesus couldn't rightly be called fully human if he did not possess everything that makes a human what they are.

Impact of the heresy/controversy to the Christian Church

While the doctrine itself seems bizarre and archaic at this point, it finds modern equivalency modern Christologies both formally crafted and privately held.

An ongoing risk in attempting to rationalize faith. While the full divinity and full humanity of Christ has been asserted and accepted as orthodox belief for centuries, it proves no less irrational, inconceivable and paradoxical now that it did when Apollinarius tried to make easy and simple sense of a difficult revealed mystery out of a perceived need to rationalize the faith. This impulse and felt urgency to rationalize and neatly explain the Christian faith most certainly did not die with him and are alive and well and oft problematic today.

A strange connection to the virgin birth. Curiously, the doctrines surrounding the Incarnation and the Virgin Birth of Jesus are especially a place where this kind of thinking about Jesus and humanity persists even now, example cited here. Some argue that Jesus' sinlessness wouldn't have been possible with a human father, that sin is an inherent human trait inherited from fathers, that the miracle of the virgin birth was compulsory if Jesus was to be capable of saving and not sinning; He couldn't have been truly one of us and his lack of a human father was the necessary difference. Erickson rightly connects this entirely unscriptural human teaching with Apollinarianism:

“to insist that having a human male parent would have excluded the possibility of deity smacks of Apollinarianism, according to which the divine Logos took the place of one of the normal components of human nature.”

Karl Barth also refutes this invented reason for the virgin birth as a forcing of Calvinist theology upon scripture, instead identifying that the virgin birth signifies that Jesus is the first of a new creation, was the first of many children of God, children born not of human desire or a husband's will, but born of God as John says; God made this happen, we did not, we had no capacity to procure our own saviour.

Necessitated clarity and unity regarding Christology - All these early church heresies forced the church to come to both agreement and clear definition of what it is we believe about Jesus. In a certain sense it was in part by being able to identify what we don't believe and why we don't believe that that our beliefs came into clear focus and the importance of unity on these core matters is made paramount, along with identifying what things we may diverge on and what things must be agreed upon to be orthodox. That latter question of primary and peripheral doctrinal issues is still very much being worked out today. But Apollinarianism and the need to denounce it as unorthodox helped make clear that the full humanity of Jesus was unquestionably a primary doctrinal issue.

Provokes an ongoing exploration into what it is to be human. Perhaps the greatest contribution to current theological discussion in the Church to come about as a result of this long-dead controversy is the way that examining and analyzing Apollinarianism, and no less it's formal refutation by the church, forces us to contend with the mystery of Jesus the human being, and the question of what it means to be human, wholly human - that indeed if Jesus was not wholly human he cannot rightly said to be human at all. The implications and possibilities for discussion from this are numerous and far reaching. Are human beings inherently sinful, is sin a fundamental part of human identity? Are we a dichotomy, a trichotomy, or entirely a product of physical processes, or none of the above? Is it warranted that we should think of ourselves compartmentally at all? What does salvation entail in light of Jesus having assumed full humanity, to redeem the human creature in it's entirety, not in part but in totality?