APOLLINARIANISM, NESTORIANISM, ARIANISM AND EUTYCHIANISM
Apollinaris (the Younger) was opposed to Arianism so that he taught an
opposite extreme, which also proved heretical. Apollinaris taught “that the divine
pre-existent Logos took the place of the ‘spirit’ in the man Jesus, so that
Jesus had a human body and a human ‘soul’ but not a human ‘spirit.’ He held
also that Christ had a body, but that the body was somehow so sublimated as to
be scarcely a human body . . . Apollinaris reduced the hu-man nature of Christ
to something less than human.”"' Apollinaris believed the spirit of man
was the seat of sin; therefore, to remove any possibility of sin from Christ,
Apollinaris felt he had to deny the humanity of Jesus’ spirit. The problem with
Apollinaris’s view was that while retaining the deity of Christ, he denied the
genuine humanity of Christ. In Apollinaris’s teach-ing Jesus was less than man.
In seeking the unity of the person of Christ, Apollinaris denied Jesus’
humanity. Apollinaris was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in A.D.
381.[1]
NESTORIANISM
Nestorius disliked the Chalcedon statement describing Mary as “moth-er of
God.” Although the statement also affirmed “as to his humanity,” Nes-torius
resisted this statement that led to the worship of Mary. Instead of
acknowledging two natures in one Person concerning Christ, Nestorius “de-nied
the real union between the divine and the human natures in Christ ... (and)
virtually held to two natures and two persons.””” Nestorius taught that while
Christ suffered in His humanity, His deity was uninvolved (which was also the
view of John of Damascus). The teaching was a denial of a real incarnation;
instead of affirming Christ as God-man, He was viewed as two persons, God and
man, with no union between them. Nestorius believed that because Mary was only
the source of Jesus’ humanity, He must be two distinct persons. Nestorius
sought to defend Christ’s deity against Arianism and to resist Mariolotry. But
he ultimately denied the unity of Christ. He was condemned at the Council of
Ephesus in A.p. 431.[2]
EUTYCHIANISM
In reaction to Nestorius, Eutyches (A.D. 380-456) founded the monophy-site heresy, declaring that Christ had only one nature. “The divine nature was so modified and accommodated to the human nature that Christ was not really divine . . . At the same time the human nature was so modified and changed by assimilation to the divine nature that He was no longer genuinely human.”" The result of the Eutychian teaching was that Christ was neither human nor divine; Eutychians created a new third nature. In their teaching, Christ had only one nature that was neither human nor divine. This view was condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in A.p. 451, but the view continued in the Coptic church in Egypt.[3]
ARIANISM
The most prominent name in the Trinitarian controversy is Arius, a
presbyter of Alexandria. In opposition to modalistic monarchianism, Arius
taught that only one who is called God is eternal and, in fact, is
incompre-hensible. To suggest that Christ is eternal would be to affirm two
Gods. Arius taught that the Son had a beginning; there was a time when the Son did
not exist. The Son was not of the “same substance” (Gk. homoousios) as the
Father; the Son was created by the Father—also referred to (incorrectly) by
Arius as being generated by the Father. Arius further taught that Christ was
Created prior to all other creation, He being the medium through which God
later created. As such, Christ is the highest ranking of all created be-ings,
however Christ is subject to change because He is not God. Arius was opposed by
the highly capable Athanasius of Alexandria. Athanasius stressed the oneness of
God while maintaining three distinct Persons within the Godhead. He also
propounded the eternal existence of the Son. Athanasius stands out in the
history of the church as one of the brilliant defenders of orthodoxy.
Because of the Arian controversy, the Council of Nicea met in A.p. 325 to
deal with the problem. Three hundred bishops attended. The council rejected
Arianism and any concessions to Arius and, with the approval of the emperor,
adopted the following creed.
We believe in
one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible, and in
one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of the Father, that
is, of the substance [ousias] of the Father, God from God, light from light,
true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance [komoou-sion] with
the Father, through whom all things came to be, those things that are in heaven
and those things that are on earth, who for us men and for our salva-tion came
down and was made flesh, and was made man, suffered, rose the third day,
ascended into the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead.
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