Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 04.djvu/809

* CHRISTMAS PANTOMIMES. 711 CHRISTOLOGY. Theatres at Cliiistmas time. The iustitutiou dates from the end of the t>eventeeiith Century, and reaeheU its highest point under Garrick. The performance usually oj)ons willi llie represen- tation of some fairy tale, the characters of which change to the harlequin, columbine, and clown of the pantomime which follows. CHRIS TODO'RXrS of Coi'TUS (Gk. Xpurrd- iupos Korrevs, ChrislodOros Koptcus). A Greek poet rc-ident in Egypt, belonging to the close of the Fifth and the beginning of the Sixth Century A.D. His three books of epigrams have perished, with the exception of two epigrams preserved in the (Jreck Aiitliolog;/. He is best known for his description in 416 hexameter verses of the statues contained in the gjnuiasium of Zeuxippus. in Constantinople. This poem has considerable alue for botli literature and the history of art. CHRISTOL'OGY (from Gk. X/)«rT6s, Christos, Christ + 'Soyla, logia, account, from X^ttv, legeiit, to say). A technical term in theology, signifying the doctrine of the person of Christ, or the answer to the question. What is the relation of the divine and human in Christ? The elements of the problem may be said to have been given by the original and unvarying conviction of the Church, that Christ was man was too plain to be denied by any. On this depended the very pos- sibility of "our "salvation (Heb. ii. 17, 18). But no less plain did it seem from the beginning, to the Apostles (.John i. 14) and to the humble men who bore the first testimony to Christ by the surrender of their lives (Ignatius, Eph. vii., etc. ), that He was truly God. On the subtleties of this problem they did not dwell : but it cer- tainly never occurred to them to divide His per- sonality. And so, when more careful reflection was forced upon the Church, the question was one of adjustment of accepted truths. How could divinity and humanity co-exist in the unity of one person? There were early answers to the question which were tentative, and soon rejected as incorrect. The Gnostics (q.v.) generally made the humanity a mere appearance : but their whole system was recognized as anti-Christian. The various theo- ries of the Trinity which arose while the pielim- inary question as to the relation of the divine in Christ to the Father was under discussion, directly aflected the Christological problem. Those "which denied the Trinity ( Patripassian- ists, Sabellians) solved the problem by removing one of its elements. Arius made the divine in Christ, and the rational principle as well, the (created) logos. Trinitarians also put forth some theories which were rejected as denying more or less the elements of the problem in- stead of reconciling them. Such were those of Apollinaris (q.v.), who taught that the human- ity of Christ was abridged, and that the place of the seTfdetermining principle (the vois ) was oc- cupied by the divine Logos; and of Eutyches (q.v.). who held that after the incarnation there was but one nature, the human being absorbed in the divine. Xestoriiis (q.v.) held firmly to the two natures, but dissolved the personality, making Christ a twofold person, the natures subsisting in 'conjunction.' By the time of the Council of Chalcednn (4.51) these various efTort-' at explanation, resulting in the essential modification of some element of the theanthropic person, had all been thought through and all liually condemned. The Church was ready to adopt a creed which reallirmed all the Lhrce elements of the problem in the follow- ing words: We confess "one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in God- head and also perfect in manhood ; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consuhstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, with- out sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and our salvation, born of the Virgin -Mary, the mother of God, according to the man- hood ; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, in- confusedly, unchangeably, iudivisibly, insepa- rably; tlxe distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the uuion, but rather the jiroperty of each nature being preserved and con- curring in one person and one substance, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ." This detinition of the Council of Chalcedon li.ed the fundamental doctrine of the Church as to the natures and jK-rson of Christ and excluded all the antecedent heresies. The two distinct natures, the divine and the human, are united in out' person. To hold otherwise would be to assert with Xestorius that there are two sons and two Christs. Amongst the important corollaries fol- lowing from these principles of faith as thus laid down are: (1) Christ's human knowledge as dis- tinct from that which belonged to him as God; (2) His absolute sinlcssness; (3) the fullness of all grace in Christ ; (4) the reality of His human body subject to those defects common to all man- kind in order to the satisfaction of the sins of human nature; (n) the predication of the divine attributes to Christ the man, and of the human attributes to God the Son. But with the Ref- ormation this fundamental problem was brought afresh Ijcfore the mind of the vigorous young Protestant movement. The Lvithcran theologians made a strong effort to solve the difliculty. rightly perceiving that it lay in maintaining tlic miity of tlic ])crson, the reality of the two natures Ijcing established beyond dispute. The solution proposed was the 'comnuinication of properties' whereby the divine was supposed to have communicated its peculiar jjroperty to the human, and the human its peculiarity to the divine. Hence the two became similar, and there was no further difficulty in supposing a vnion in one personality. But this theory was finally generally rejected, and has to-day little standing even nniong Lutherans. How the hu- man could take on the divine, the material body becoming omnipresent, did not grow clearer as time went on. The only Christology which the Reformation period may therefore be said to have contributed to modern times was the Socinitui, which revived that of the earlier anti-Trinita- rians, and eventually maintained that Christ was a mere man. During the past century there has been a great deal of interest taken in Germany, in particular, in the Christological problem, and three strenuous and distinct theories of Christ's person have been set forth. Professor Dorner of Berlin began, not with the person of Christ, but with the two natures, saying that, as the