In our first article, we introduced both sides of the fifth century incarnation debate: the Word-flesh position of Alexandria, which emphasized the union of Christ's human and divine natures, and the Word-man stance of Antioch, which stressed the distinction between the two natures. The early hero of the Word-flesh position was none other than the venerable Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296-373 A.D.), the champion of Nicaea. His position was crafted to refute three clearly heretical views that had been popular at one time or another. The first was Docetism. This view held that Jesus did not have a real body. His body had been only apparently real. The second was Arianism, which contended that the Word had actually been changed into flesh, that is, his essential nature had become forfeit at his incarnation.

The third was Adoptionism. This notion had been promulgated by Paul of Samosata in the third century who argued that Jesus had been a mere man upon whom the Logos alighted, subsequently exalting Jesus above mere manhood. Against all three of these positions, Athanasius held that the Logos remained fully divine throughout his Incarnation and that his becoming flesh was a real event that in no way compromised his divinity. Athanasius declared that the Logos “became flesh, not that He has been changed into flesh, but that He has taken living flesh on our behalf and has become man” (J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Fifth Ed., 285). In this “becoming,” the Word never relinquished his essential nature, but took on real flesh without dissolution of his divinity. 

In the thought of Athanasius, the union between flesh and Word was complete and indivisible. Furthermore, he emphasized the primacy of the Word in this union. J. N. D. Kelly points out that “the Word for Athanasius was the governing principle in Jesus Christ, the subject of all the sayings, experiences, and actions attributed to the Gospel Figure” (Kelly, 285-86). Hence, Athanasius, as he had so ably done at Nicaea, led the charge in securing the divinity of the Word even in the incarnation. Yet, in so doing, he unwittingly diminished the full humanity of the flesh that he insisted was real.

Although he never actively denied the full humanity of Christ, his overarching emphasis on the primacy of the Logos as the subject of all of Christ’s experiences has raised the historical question of whether or not Athanasius held that Jesus’ flesh actually harbored a “human rational soul” (Kelly, 287). Many scholars argue that Athanasius did in fact acknowledge Jesus’ full humanity, but that he nonetheless saw his human soul as at best inoperative and playing no part in salvation. Herein lay the weakness of the Alexandrian Word-flesh position, a weakness that inevitably led to its extreme heretical expression in the thought of Apollinarius of Laodicea. 

Apollinarius (c. 310-390 A.D.), was a close friend of Athanasius, and throughout his life insisted that he was only expounding what he believed his friend had said about the union of the divine and the human in Jesus. Apollinarius, however, went well beyond the boundaries of orthodoxy and vehemently denied that Jesus Christ possessed a rational human soul or mind. His is a classic case of good intentions resulting in heresy. Apollinarius believed that, since the human soul and intellect formed the seat of human depravity, they had to be completely replaced by the rational nature of the divine Logos in order for the salvation of man to be accomplished. David Wells observes that, according to Apollinarius,

God…replaced the “hegemonic principle,” the intellect or directing center in Jesus’ humanity. Jesus, he said, was “not a human being but like a human being” because “in his highest part,” the intellect, he was not “consubstantial with humanity.” The Word joined to himself a soulless humanity (David Wells, The Person of Christ: A Biblical and Historical Analysis of the Incarnation, Crossways Books, 1984). 

Thus was born the heresy of Apollinarianism, the view which held that “Jesus was hominoid but not fully human” (Wells, 106). 

The heresy was quickly condemned by both East and West. Most troubling were the salvific ramifications of the view. For all Apollinarius’ concern for salvation, his critics rightly saw in his abandonment of the full humanity of Christ the loss of any hope for the salvation of man. The great Cappadocian father Gregory Nazianzen had declared that “what has not been assumed cannot be restored; it is what is united to God which is saved” (Kelly, 297). If what had been united to the Logos in the incarnation was less than full humanity, then the work of Christ on the cross had not really secured the complete salvation of those he had come to redeem. It was the potential for such extremes inherent in the Word-flesh scheme to which the advocates of Antioch pointed when training their polemical guns in the direction of Alexandria. And, of course, in their Word-man model, they believed they had a better idea. We will consider their point of view in our next post, "The Word Was a Man ."

Blessings,

Arnie Gentile

                                     Visit the Christian Apologetics Bookshop.