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 INCARNATION

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INCARNATION

nature of Jesus, the fact of the union of these two natures in Jesus. We now take up the crucial ques- tion of the nature of this fact, the manner of this tremendous miracle, the way of uniting the Divine with the human nature in one and the same Person. Arius had denied the fact of this union. No other heresy rent and tore the body of the Church to any very great extent in the matter of this fact after the condemnation of Arius in the Council of Nicaea (.325). Soon a new liere.sy arose in the explanation of the fact of the union of the two natures in Christ. Nicsea had, indeed, defined the fact of the union; it had not explicitly defined the nature of that fact; it had not said whether that union was moral or physical. The council had implicitly defined the union of the two natures in one hypostasis, a union called physical in opposition to the mere juxtaposition or joining of the two natures called a moral union. Niciea had professed a belief in " One Lord Jesus Christ . . . true God of true God . . . Who took Flesh, became Man and suffered". This belief was in one Person Who was at the same time God and Man, that is, had at the same time Divine and human nature. Such teaching was an implicit definition of all that was later on denied by Nestorius. We shall find the great Athanasius, for fifty years the determined foe of the heresiarch, interpreting Nica-a's decree in just this sense; and Athanasius must have known the sense meant by Nictea, in which he was the antagonist of the heretic Arius.

(1) In spite of the efforts of Athanasius, Nestorius, who had been elected Patriarch of Constantinople (428), found a loophole to avoid the definition of Nica^a. Nestorius (q. v.) called the union of the two natures a mysterious and an inseparable joining {ffvvdipeiav), but woukl admit no unity (fcwo-ii-) in the strict sense of the word to be the result of this joining (see "Serm.",ii, n. 4; xii, n.2, in P. L., XLV'III). The union of the two natures is not physical (0iiiri)fi)) but moral, a mere juxtaposition in state of Ijeing (o-xeTinii) ; the Word indwells in Jesus like as (iod indwells in the just (loc. cit.) ; the indwelling of the Word in Jesus is, however, more excellent than the indwelling of God in the just man by grace, for that the indwelling of tlie Word purposes the Redemption of all mankind and the most perfect manifestation of the Divine activity (Serm. vii, n. 24); as a consequence, Mary is the Mother of Christ (X/jio-tot-Akos), not the Mother of God (OeordKO!). As is usual in these Oriental heresies, the metaphysical refinement of Nestorius was faulty, and led him into a practical denial of the mystery that he had set himself to explain. During the discussion that Nestorius aroused, he strove to explain that his indwelling {if/olKijaii) theory was quite enough to keep him within the demands of Nica\i; he insisted that " the Man Jesus should be co-adored with the Divine union and almighty God [tAx t;; eel(f crvmiixtg. r^ TravTOKpdTopL Qei^ ffv^ivpoaKVvoVjXivov &vdpijiirovy' (Serm., vii, n. 35); he forcibly denied that (Ihrist was two persons, but proclaimed Him as one person {■wp6(7ij>Tvov) made up of two substances. The oneness of the Person was however only moral, and not at all physical. Despite whatsoever Nestorius said as a pretext to save himself from the brand of heresy, he continually and _ explicitly denied the hypostatic union (^i^wtric \-a(?' xnrbffraaLv^ Kara (f)6crtv, kot oiJtr/a*'), that union of physical entities and of substances which the Church defends in Jesus; he affirmed a juxta- position in authority, dignity, energy, relation, and state of being (uwdtpeta Kar' avdtvrtav, d^iav, ev^pyaav, dvdipopav, axif^v) ; and he maintained that the Fathers of Nicsa had nowhere said that Cnd was born of the Virgin Mary (Sermo, v, nn. 5 and 0).

A. Nestorius in this distortion of the sense of Nicsea clearly went against the tradition of the Church. Be- fore he had denied the hypostatic union of the two natures in Jesus, that union had been taught by the

greatest Fathers of their time. St. Hippolytus (about 230) taught: " the Flesh {cdpi] apart from the Logos had no hypostasis [ou5^ . . . viroardvaL eAycaro, was unable to act as principle of rational activity], for that its hypostasis was in the Word" ("Contra Noet.", n. 15, in P. G., X, 823). St. Epiphanius (about 365): "The Logos united body, mind, and soul into one totality and spiritual hypostasis" ("Haer.", xx, n. 4, in P. G., XLI, 277). "The Logos made the Flesh to subsist in the hypostasis of the Logos [ct's iavrbv i)iroaTi]aa.vTa. riiv irri/jKa] " ("HiEr.", cxxvii, n. 29, in P.G.,XLII,6.S4). St. Athanasius (about 350); "They err who say that it is one person who is the Son that suffered, and another person who did not suffer . . . ; the Flesh became God's own by nature \Ka.Tk ^pia-ir], not that it became consubstantial with the Divinity of the Logos as if coeternal therewith, but that it became Ciod's own Flesh by its very nature [Kara tfiiaiv]." In this entire discourse ("Contra Apolli- narium", I, 12, in P. G., XXVL 1113), St. Athanasius directly attacks the specious pretexts of the Arians and the arguments that Nestorius later took up, and defends the union of two physical natures in Christ [xard ^i/o-iv], as apposed to the mere juxtaposition or joining of the same natures [xara cxi"^"]- St. Cyril of Alexandria (about 415) makes use of this formula oftener even than the other Fathers; he calls Christ "the Word of the Father united in nature with the Flesh [rbv iK deov XlarpAs A670C KarcL tpvtjiv €vwd4vTa aapKiy ("De Recta Fide", n. 8, in P. G., LXXVI, 1210). For other and very numerous citations, see Petavius (III, 4). The Fathers always explain that this physical union of the two natures iloes not mean the intermingling of the natures, nor any such union as would imply a change in (!od, Imt only such union as was necessary to explain the fact that one Divine Person had human nature as His own true nature to- gether with His Divine nature.

B. The Council of Ephesus (431) condemned the heresy of Nestorius, and tlefined that Mary was mother in the flesh of God's Wonl made Flesh (can. i). It anathematized all who deny that the Word of God the Father was united with the Flesh in one hypostasis (Ka6 ' mbaraatv) ; all who deny that there is only one Christ with Flesh that is His own; all who deny that the same Christ is God at the same time and man (can. ii). In the remaining ten canons drawn up by St. Cyril of Alexandria, the anathema is aimed directly at Nestorius. " If in the one Christ anyone divides the substances, after they have been once united, and joins them together merely by a juxtaposition [p-hvri (rvi/dwTuip auras (Tuca^ei?] of honour or of authority or of power and not rather by a union into a physical vmity [<rvp6Sip Trj Ka6' ivuaiv (pv<nK'fii'\ let him be accursed" (can. iii). These twelve canons condemn piecemeal the various subterfuges of Nestorius. St. Cyril saw heresy lurking in phrases that seemed innocent enough to the unsuspecting. Even the co-adoration theory is condemned as an attempt to separate the Divine from the human nature in Jesus by giving to each a separate hypostasis (see Denzinger, "Enchiridion", ed. 1908, nn. 113-26).

(2) The condemnation of the heresy of Nestorius saved for the Church the dogma of the Incarnation, "the great mystery of godliness" (I Tim., iii, 16), but lost to her a portion of her children, who, though dwindled down to insignificant numbers, still remain apart from her care. The vmion of the two natures in one Person was saved. The battle for the dogma was not yet won. Nestorius had postulated two persons in Jesus Christ. A new heresy soon began. It postulated only one Person in Jesus, and that the Divine Person. It went farther. It went too far. The new heresy defended only one nature, as well as one Person in Jesus. The leader of this heresy was Eutyches. His followers were called Monophysites. They varied in their ways of explanation. Some