controversy, is, on the one hand, a closer discussion of the Pauline idea of the kenosis, the self-limitation, self-renunciation of the Logos, and on the other hand, a truly human por trait of Jesus in his earthly development from childhood to the full maturity of manhood, without prejudice to his deity, but rather showing forth his absolute uniqueness and sinless perfection as a proof of his Godhead. Both these tasks can and should be so performed, that the enormous labor of deep and earnest thought in the ancient church be not condemned as a sheer waste of strength, but in substance confirmed, expanded, and perfected.

And even among believing Protestant scholars, who agree in the main views of the theanthropic glory of the person of Christ, opinions still diverge. Some restrict the kenosis to the laying aside of the divine form of existence, or divine dignity and glory; others strain it in different degrees, even to a partial or entire emptying of the divine essence out of himself, so that the inner trinitarian process between Father and Son, and the government of the world through the Son, were partially or wholly suspended during his earthly life.' Some, again, view the incarnation as an instantaneous act, consummated in the miraculous conception and nativity; others as a gradual process, an ethical unification of the eternal Logos and the man Jesus in continuous development, so that the complete God-Man would be not so much the beginning as the consummation of the earthly life of Jesus.

But all these more recent inquiries, earnest, profound, and valuable as they are, have not as yet led to any important or generally accepted results, and cannot supersede the Chalcedonian Christology. The theology of the church will ever return anew to deeper and still deeper contemplation and

1 of the dóca Beoû, John xvii. 5; the μopph coû, Phil. ii. 6 ff.

• Among these modern Kenotics, W. F. Gess goes the farthest in his Lehre von der Person Christi (Basel, 1856). Dorner opposes the theory of the Kenotics and calls them Theopaschites and Patripassians (ii. 126 ff.). There is, however, an essential distinction, inasmuch as the ancient Monophysite Theopaschitism reduces the human nature of Christ to a mere accident of his Godhead, while Thomasius, Gess, and the other German Kenotics or Kenosists acknowledge the full humanity of Christ, and lay great stress on it.

adoration of the theanthropic person of Jesus Christ, which is, and ever will be, the sun of history, the miracle of miracles, the central mystery of godliness, and the inexhaustible foun tain of salvation and life for the lost race of man.

§ 143. The Monophysite Controversies.

I. The Acta in MANSI, tom. vii.-ix. The writings already cited of LIBERA. TUS and LEONTIUS BYZANT. EVAGRIUS: H. E. ii. v. NICEPHORUS: H. E. xvi. 25. PROCOPIUS († about 552): 'Avéxdora, Hist. arcana (ed. Orelli, Lips. 1827). FACUNDUS (bishop of Hermiane in Africa, but residing mostly in Constantinople): Pro defensione trium capitulorum, in 12 books (written a. D. 547, ed. Sirmond, Paris, 1629, and in Galland. xi. 665). FULGENTIUS FERRANDUS (deacon in Carthage, † 551): Pro tribus capitulis (in Gall. tom. xi.). ANASTASIUS SINAITA (bishop of Antioch, 564): 'Odnyós adv. Acephalos. ANGELO MAI: Script vet. nova collectio, tom. vii. A late, though unimportant, contribution to the history of Monophysitism (from 581 to 583) is the Church History of the Monophysite bishop JOHN OF EPHESUS (of the sixth century): The Third Part of the Eccles. History of John, bishop of Ephesus, Oxford, 1853 (edited by W. Cureton from the Syrian literature of the Nitrian convent).

II. PETAVIUS: De Incarnatione, lib. i. c. 16-18 (tom. iv. p. 74 sqq.). WALCH: Bd. vi.-viii. SOHROOKн: Th. xviii. pp. 498-636. NEANDER: Kirchengeschichte, iv. 993-1038. GIESELER: i. ii. pp. 347-376 (4th ed.), and his Commentatio qua Monophysitarum veterum variæ de Christi persona opiniones. illustrantur (1835 and 1838). Bauz: Geschichte der Trinitätslehre, Bd. ii. pp. 37-96. DORNER: Geschichte der Christologie, ii. pp. 150–193. HEFELE (R. C.): Conciliengeschichte, ii. 545 ff. F. RUD. HASSE: Kirchengeschichte (1864), Bd. i. p. 177 ff. A. EBRARD: Handbuch der Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte (1865), Bd. i. pp. 263-279.

The council of Chalcedon did not accomplish the intended pacification of the church, and in Palestine and Egypt it met with passionate opposition. Like the council of Nicæa, it must pass a fiery trial of conflict before it could be universally acknowledged in the church. "The metaphysical difficulty," says Niedner," and the religious importance of the problem, were obstacles to the acceptance of the ecumenical authority of the council." Its opponents, it is true, rejected the Euty chian theory of an absorption of the human nature into the

divine, but nevertheless held firmly to the doctrine of one nature in Christ; and on this account, from the time of the Chalcedonian council they were called Monophysites,' while they in return stigmatized the adherents of the council as Dyophysites and Nestorians. They conceded, indeed, a composite nature (μία φύσις σύνθετος or μία φύσις διττή), but not They assumed a diversity of qualities without corresponding substances, and made the humanity in Christ a mere accident of the immutable divine substance.

two natures.

Their main argument against Chalcedon was, that the doctrine of two natures necessarily led to that of two persons, or subjects, and thereby severed the one Christ into two Sons of God. They were entirely at one with the Nestorians in their use of the terms "nature" and "person," and in rejecting the orthodox distinction between the two. They could not conceive of human nature without personality. From this the Nestorians reasoned that, because in Christ there are two natures, there must be also two independent hypostases; the Monophysites, that, because there is but one person in Christ, there can be only one nature. They regarded the nature as something common to all individuals of a species (xovóv), yet as never existing simply as such, but only in individuals. According to them, therefore, þúσis or ovσía is in fact always an individual existence.*

The liturgical shibboleth of the Monophysites was: God has been crucified. This they introduced into their public worship as an addition to the Trisagion: "Holy God, holy Mighty, holy Immortal, who hast been crucified for us, have mercy upon us." From this they were also called Theopaschites. This formula is in itself orthodox, and forms the requisite counterpart to Jeoтóxos, provided we understand by God the Logos, and in thought supply: "according to the

* Μονοφυσίται, from μόνη or μία, φύσις. They conceded the ἐκ δύο φύσεων (απ even Eutyches and Dioscurus had done), but denied the è dúo purea after the Ένωσις.

Ο Αγιος ὁ Θεός, ἅγιος ἴσχυρος, ἅγιος ἀθάνατος, ὁ σταυρωθεὶς δι' ἡμᾶς, ἐλέησ Яuâs. An extension of the seraphic ascription, Isa. vi. 3.

• Θεοπασχῖται.

flesh," or "according to the human nature." In this qualified sense it was afterwards in fact not only sanctioned by Justinian in a dogmatical decree, but also by the fifth ecumenical council, though not as an addition to the Trisagion. For the the anthropic person of Christ is the subject, as of the nativity, so also of the passion; his human nature is the seat and the organ (sensorium) of the passion. But as an addition to the Trisagion, which refers to the Godhead generally, and therefore to the Father, and the Holy Ghost, as well as the Son, the formula is at all events incongruous and equivocal. Theopaschitism is akin to the earlier Patripassianism, in subjecting the impassible divine essence, common to the Father and the Son, to the passion of the God-Man on the cross; yet not, like that, by confounding the Son with the Father, but by confounding person with nature in the Son.

Thus from the council of Chalcedon started those violent and complicated Monophysite controversies which convulsed the Oriental church, from patriarchs and emperors down to monks and peasants, for more than a hundred years, and which have left their mark even to our day. They brought theology little appreciable gain, and piety much harm; and they present a gloomy picture of the corruption of the church. The intense concern for practical religion, which animated Athanasius and the Nicene fathers, abated or went astray; theological speculation sank towards barren metaphysical refinements; and party watchwords and empty formulas were valued more than real truth. We content ourselves with but a summary of this wearisome, though not unimportant chapter of the history of doctrines, which has recently received new light from the researches of Gieseler, Baur, and Dorner.'

The external history of the controversy is a history of outrages and intrigues, depositions and banishments, commotions, divisions, and attempted reunions. Immediately after the council of Chalcedon bloody fights of the monks and the rabble broke out, and Monophysite factions went off in schis

'The external history of Monophysitism is related with wearisome minutenese by Walch in three large volumes (vi.-viii.) of his Entwurf einer vollständigen Histo rie der Ketzereien, etc., bis auf die Zeiten der Reformation.

matic churches. In Palestine Theodosius (451-453) thus set up in opposition to the patriarch Juvenal of Jerusalem; in Alexandria, Timotheus Elurus' and Peter Mongus' (454–460), in opposition to the newly-elected patriarch Protarius, who was murdered in a riot in Antioch; Peter the Fuller' (463–470). After thirty years' confusion the Monophysites gained a temporary victory under the protection of the rude pretender to the empire, Basiliscus (475-477), who in an encyclical letter,* enjoined on all bishops to condemn the council of Chalcedon (476). After his fall, Zeno (474-475 and 477-491), by advice of the patriarch Acacius of Constantinople, issued the famous formula of concord, the Henoticon, which proposed, by avoiding disputed expressions, and condemning both Eutychianism and Nestorianism alike, to reconcile the monophysite and dyophysite views, and tacitly set aside the Chalcedonian formula (482). But this was soon followed by two more schisms, one among the Monophysites themselves, and one between the East and the West. Felix II., bishop of Rome, immediately rejec ted the Henoticon, and renounced communion with the East (484-519). The strict Monophysites were as ill content with the Henoticon, as the adherents of the council of Chalcedon; and while the former revolted from their patriarchs, and became Acephali,' the latter attached themselves to Rome. It was not till the reign of the emperor Justin I. (518-527), that the authority of the council of Chalcedon was established under stress of a popular tumult, and peace with Rome was estored. The Monophysite bishops were now deposed, and fled for the most part to Alexandria, where their party was too powerful to be attacked.

The internal divisions of the Monophysites turned especially on the degree of essential difference between the humanity of Christ and ordinary human nature, and the degree, therefore, 1 Αίλουρος, Cat,

⚫ Móyyos, the Stammerer; literally, the Hoarse.

• Fullo, γναφεύς. He introduced the formula: Θεὸς ἐσταυρώθη δι' ἡμᾶς into the liturgy. He was in 485 again raised to the patriarchate.

• 'EYKÚKALOV. This, however, excited so much opposition, that the usurper in 477 revoked it in an ἀντεγκύκλιον.

''Axépaλo, without head.