Philip Schaff

“ In this way Apollinaris established so close a connexion of the Logos with human flesh, that all the divine attributes were transferred to the human nature, and all the human attributes to the divine, and the two merged in one nature in Christ. Hence he could speak of a crucifixion of the Logos, and a worship of His flesh. He made Christ a middle being between God and man, in Whom, as it were, one part divine and two parts human were fused in the unity of a new nature. ”

“ The pseudo-Clementine Homilies (xvii. 2 seq.) teach that God, in order to be an object of love, must be the highest beauty, and consequently have a body, since there is no beauty without form; nor could we pray to a God Who was mere spirit. ”

“ He declared the doctrine of the divinity of Christ to be an innovation dating from the time of Zephyrinus, the successor of Victor, and a relapse into heathen polytheism. He asserted that Christ was a mere man, but born of a virgin, and superior in virtue to the prophets. The Artemonites were charged with placing Euclid above Christ, and abandoning the Scriptures for dialectics and mathematics. This indicates a critical or sceptical turn of mind. The views of Artemon were afterwards more fully developed by Paul of Samosata, who is sometimes counted with the Artemonites. ”

“ Apollinaris was the first to apply the results of the Nicene controversy to Christology proper, and to call the attention of the church to the psychical and pneumatic element in the humanity of Christ; but in his zeal for the true deity of Christ, and fear of a double personality, he fell into the error of a partial denial of His true Humanity. ”

“ In the present century Anthropomorphism has been revived by the Mormons, who conceive God as an intelligent material being, with body, members, and passions, and unable to occupy two distinct places at once. ”

“ Athanasius, the two Gregories, Basil, and Epiphanius combated the Apollinarian error, but were unprepared to answer duly its main point, that two integral persons cannot form one person. The later orthodox doctrine surmounted this difficulty by teaching the impersonality of the human nature of Christ, and by making the personality of Christ to reside wholly in the Logos. ”

“ That they attributed these books to Cerinthus, the Docetist and enemy of St. John, shows their utter want of critical judgment. They tried to refute the Gospel of St. John by the Synoptic Gospels, but with very poor arguments. In opposition to the Montanists, they also denied the continuance of the spiritual gifts in the church. It is not clear from Epiphanius whether the Alogi rejected only St. John's doctrines of the Logos, or also the divinity of Christ in any form. He calls them in his violent way (l. c. 3) ἀλλότριοι παντάπασιν τοῦ κηρύγματος τῆς ἀληθείας ”

“ During the Origenistic controversies towards the end of the 4th cent., anthropomorphism was held independently by many Egyptian monks in the Scetic desert, who, with Pachomius at their head, were the most violent opponents of the spiritualistic theology of Origen, and were likewise called Anthropomorphites ”

“ This whole question is rather one of scholastic subtlety, though not wholly idle, and may be solved in this way: that the body of Christ, before the Resurrection, was similar in its constitution to the body of Adam before the Fall, containing the germ or possibility of immortality and incorruptibility, but subject to the influence of the elements, and was actually put to death by external violence, but through the indwelling power of the sinless Spirit was preserved from corruption and raised again to an imperishable life, when—to use an ingenious distinction of St. ”

“ Acephali (from ἀ and κεφαλή, those without a head or leader) is a term applied:— (1) To the bishops of the oecumenical council of Ephesus in 431, who refused to follow either St. Cyril or John of Antioch—the leaders of the two parties in the Nestorian controversy. (2) To a radical branch of Monophysites, who rejected not only the oecumenical council of Chalcedon in 451, but also the Henoticon of the emperor Zeno, issued in 482 to the Christians of Egypt, to unite the orthodox and the Monophysites. ”

“ Dorner (Hist. of Christology, i. p. 503, German ed.) thinks it probable that they allowed no distinctions in the Godhead, and thought that the divinity of the Father dwelt in the man Jesus. But this would identify them with the Patripassians. ”

“ Bekk. p. 284) ; Baronius, Annal. ad A.D. 535; Walch. Hist. der Ketzereien, viii. 644‒684; Baur, Lehre v. der Dreieinigkeit, etc., ii. pp. 87 ff; Dorner, Entwicklungsgeschichte, etc., ii. pp. 172 f; cf. D. C. B. (4 vol. ed.) art. Person of Christ. ”