Early Christological controversies

Early Christological controversies
http://www.theoasis.org.au/content/view/58/

Some background information:

Early debates
Debates in the second century focus on this issue of reconciling the human figure with the divine identity of Jesus. These debates led to the final split of Christianity from Judaism which, however, did little to lessen the internal divisions within Christianity itself as it struggled to account for the human-divine identity of Jesus Christ. As we shall see, it is not just a matter of striking the right formula (seeing things aright), but also a matter of being converted to a new way of naming and experiencing the perfect divine presence in our most imperfect human world.


One of the earliest groups of faithful Jews who also wanted to acknowledge the special status of Jesus were the Ebionites. They recognised Jesus as God's chosen prophet who had come to put an end to the Old Testament priesthood. However, in expressely denying the virginal birth of Jesus and the pre-existence of the Son, they found themselves on the outside of accepted christian belief and practice. Their position was not dissimilar to that of the Moralists who spoke of Jesus as a unique, 'moral' figure of human history, endowed with special powers, and who could serve as an example for others to follow.


Even after the separation from Judaism, Christians continued to identify themselves as monotheists. Influenced by Greek thought, the Monarchists and Adoptionists struggled with the idea of God's absolute, unchanging reality. This led the former group to speak of God's 'monarchy' and to deny any distinction between the Father and the Son. In this scenario, the divinity of the Son, Jesus, is achieved through denying his true individuality and humanity. The latter group tried to solve the problem by suggesting that Jesus was 'adopted' as God's Son and thereby was not fully or truly divine.


Another widespread movement in early christianity was known as Gnosticism because its members claimed to be 'gnostics', that is, those who possessed secret knowledge. Part of their 'knowledge' involved an understanding of the material world as either evil or unreal and therefore not created by God who is both good and real. It is interesting for us to note that such a negative view of the world and creation generally has often plagued Cristianity as many another religion and culture. Early Christian gnostics logically reasoned that the incarnation was not an acceptable doctrine. Their Christology is best expressed by the Docetists who said that Jesus only 'appeared' to be human or that he took a human form in the manner of a 'costume'.


It is customary to divide these early movements into those which deny the full divinity of Jesus (Ebionites, Moralists and Adoptionists) and those that declaim Jesus' true humanity (Monarchists, Gnostics and Docetists). While this is no doubt the case, there is much more at stake in these debates, namely, the inability to understand or experience the divine as the pathos of love and compassion and the inability to understand or experience the human as the locus of genuine divinity. Neither side of these Christological debates is able to breakthrough the dualistic separation of an all-powerful and absolutely transcendent God and a messy, changeable all too human (= too corrupt) created world.


In essence, these debates represent a failure to fully depth the mystery of the Hebrew God of the Old Testament and of Jesus whose pathos and world-involvement are constantly evident. They likewise represent a failure to relate to the human and creative possibilities that are manifested to us in the life of Jesus (itself based on the Jewish experience of the essential goodness of all creation that springs from God). The issue of Jesus identity really comes down to the issue of how God is, or even can be, present to the world. Certainly, this was the key-issue behind the Christological debates in the second and third centuries.


From Arius to the Council of Nicea
Arius was one of the early Christian monks who brought matters of Jesus' divine-human identity to a point of crisis. He was probably more a popularizer of prevailing ideas than an original thinker himself. Indeed, apart from his evident preaching abilities, part of his appeal was in the fact that he lived a holy, austere and moral life. As is often the case with religious politics, it is only when ideas stir the people--to the point, it is said, that there were massive demonstrations in the streets of Alexandria--, that civil and religious authorities take note and react. And react they did, to the point of banishing Arius and calling the first full-scale Council in the church's history.


What was it that Arius and his followers, the Arians, taught that created such a stir? Arius held that the Logos was a demi-God interceding between God and the world. The Logos was not God but a creature, albeit of exalted status; nor, strictly speaking, could the Logos be identified with a purely worldly reality. This meant that Jesus, in whom the Logos was uniquely present, was neither fully divine nor truly human, but something in between both. If Arius was only baldly declaring what had been implied in earlier teachings, history was to present him with the role of scapegoat for holding a doctrine contrary to orthodox Christian belief.


Whether we call it fate or providence, the fact is that the Arian dispute occurred at a point in history where Christian unity was considered essential for the unity of what came to be called the 'Holy Roman Empire'. The emperor Constantine, upon his conversion to the Christian faith in 312 CE, soon santioned Christianity with 'official religion' status. This meant that any source of inner-religious division was likely to boil over into political and civil unrest. History records that it was Constantine rather than the bishop of Rome or the patriarch of Alexandria who actually decreed the Council at Nicea in 325 CE. It was likewise the emperor Constantine who opened the Council and confirmed its decrees.


Evidently, religion and politics had become entangled to the point where matters of theological debate were significant for social harmony. Over two hundred bishops gathered at Nicea in a mood of enthusiasm and optimism. As much as anything, the Council symbolized the wonderful advances of Christianity--from a Jewish sect to a Gentile church and from a persecuted minority to the established religion of the empire--in fewer than three hundred years.


The Council also responded to the theological matter at hand: it condemned the teachings of Arius and upheld that Jesus was not a demi-God but indeed 'God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, Begotten, not made, . . .' Most significantly, Nicea defended Jesus' divine status not just in scriptural terminology but through the use of Greek language--'homoousios' ('translated 'one in substance' or 'one in being') with the Father. Effectively, Nicea established the principle of the necessity of translating the Christian message into the language and the culture of the people to whom it is being addressed. This is sometimes called the incarnational, sacramental or missionary principle of Christian faith which has been so significant in the ability of the church to make its message heard in diverse cultures throughout the centuries.


What, then, are we to make of Nicea's Christological achievements? By affirming the full divinity of Jesus, Nicea actually saves Christianity from the excesses of Greek philosophy which held on to a totally changeless and immutable God who is somehow immune from any real contact with the created world. Because the divine mystery is fully present in the human Jesus, this works as a powerful symbol for the reality of God's pathos and love in human history. Moreover, properly understood, this links in with a notion of salvation that consists, not in flight from the (evil) world, but in commitment to a (healing) world. In these ways, Nicea reiterates the central insights of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.


Nonetheless, Nicea's single focus on the divinity of Jesus leaves us with a most unbalanced picture. What about the other dimensions of the Jesus event such as his humanity, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection? In essence, where is the connection to the historical Jesus to be made in all this talk of divine status? It would seem that Nicea affirms Jesus' divinity but then severs it from the concrete reality of his human existence. Neither should we forget that there are political dimensions to the Council which are related to the cause of the Roman empire: Jesus is now the triumphant, imperial Lord rather than one who sides with the oppressed, alienates the powerful, and goes to his death in a state of abject humiliation.


Evidently, one Council cannot achieve everything. Consequently, we need to read Nicea's 'high Christology' in relation to the Christology of the humiliated Jesus presented to us in the writings of the early Christian martyrs. This may also be a place to mention that the more masculine Word/Logos-Christology adopted by the 'early fathers' should be complemented by more attention to the feminine Wisdom/Sophia-Christology of the Scriptures. [ See Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet (New York: Continuum, 1995), 131-162; and Denis Edwards, Jesus the Wisdom of God (Homebush: St Paul's, 1995), 19-68. ] It is surely significant, that as Christianity lost contact with its more radical roots, it relegated the feminine, along with the poor and outcast, to a less than central position in its life and self-reflections. In all this, there is a loss of contact with the biblical understanding of Jesus.


In any event, the Council of Nicea was a significant ecclesial and political event in Christian life and self-understanding. Its promotion of the divinity of Jesus soon affected the church's liturgy which moved away from the sense of communal meal and celebration towards the more private experience of worship. Nicea was also a symbol of the new unity of church and state. Henceforth, as Constantine had predicted, Christianity would 'play a role similar to that which the old State religion of Rome had played'. [Cited by William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 310. ] Moreover, the articulation of the Christian mystery would now become increasingly dependant on Greek philosophy rather than the Jewish and Christian scriptures.


Nonetheless, as history would soon reveal, Nicea does not have the last word on the issue of Jesus' identity. Its many unanswered questions were soon to flare up in a new series of controversies.


From Athanasius to the Council of Chalcedon
The issue that Nicea failed to address could be summarized as follows: if Jesus is both divine and human, how are these two realities united in his personhood? One answer solves the problem by simply accepting the 'other half' of Arianism (the 'half' that Nicea does not directly condemn) which states that Jesus' humanity is a 'costume' or 'mask' which he wore to conceal his real (divine) identity. This is only a solution to the extent that it dissolves the problem: Jesus is not genuinely human at all. Although this may appear to be a far-fetched kind of answer, it is actually the image of Jesus that has underpinned many a Christian theology and piety throughout the ages.


A couple of extreme examples of this solution to the issue of Jesus' identity are the following:
For he ate, not for the sake of the body, which was kept together by a holy energy, but in order that it might not enter into the mind of those who were with him to entertain a different opinion of him. (Clement of Alexandria)
Our Lord felt the force of suffering but without its pain; the nails pierced the flesh as an object passes through the air, painlessly. (Hilary of Poitiers) [ Clement of Alexandria and Hilary of Poitiers respectively, cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ]


Athanasius (d.373), who had attended the Council of Nicea as a deacon, and had subsequently been appointed bishop to the influential see of Alexandria, sought to explain Nicea's teaching on the divinity of Jesus without falling into this trap of comprimising his humanity. Athanasius taught that, unless Jesus was both genuinely human and truly divine, then the purpose of the incarnation--the divinization of humanity--could not be achieved.


The approach of Athanasius and the Alexandrian School is sometimes called 'Word-flesh' Christology. It begins by affirming the divinity of the pre-existent Logos which is then united to the human flesh of Jesus. To the question of whether Christ really suffered--a prospect which Hilary of Poitiers clearly denies (see the quotation above)--, Athansius says that Christ, the Word, the divine Logos does suffer 'in his body' but 'not in himself'. For Athanasius and Alexandrian Christology generally the divine in Jesus always takes precedence over the human. Specifically, it does not seem to provide a place for the human 'soul' (intellect, emotions and will) of Jesus. Nonetheless, Athanasius' attempt to explicate the divine-human identity of Jesus does take us some steps forward.


An extreme form of Alexandrian teaching, which shows its inherent weakness, is evident in Apollinaris (d.390) who outrightly denies that Jesus has a human mind and soul. For Apollinaris, Christ was the 'heavenly man' who, he says, 'is neither fully man nor God, but a mixture of God and man'. For Apollinaris, the divine Logos is the human consciousness of Jesus: that is another way of saying that the historical Jesus did not have human consciousness at all. This teaching was condemned by the first Council of Constantinople in 381 CE. Evidently, there was need for another model to explain how the divine could be present in the human Jesus. It so happened that an alternative approach was being developed--not in Alexandria, but in the rival city of Antioch.


As often happens with rival cities, not only are they divided on matters of food and custom, but they also develop their own ideologies, theologies and ways of thinking about life. Followers of the Antiochene School developed what is called a 'Word-man' Christology. By beginning their reflections with the human Jesus rather than the pre-existing Logos, they hoped to safeguard the humanity of Christ. One of their chief ploys and lasting impacts was to speak of 'two natures' in Jesus Christ, one human, the other divine. Consequently, they were able to locate Jesus' real human soul in his human nature while allowing for another, separate, divine nature. If there was a problem with this apprroach, it is that we are still left with the issue of understanding how these two natures could co-exist in the one identity. Surely, if there were two natures, there must be two Christs!


Of course, to our ears today, all this sounds very abstract as well as being devoid of any real interest in the historical realities of Jesus' earthly life. However, we should not think that, for the ordinary Christian folk of the fourth and fifth centuries, these matters were either uninteresting or reserved for scholarly church debate. Elizabeth Johnson tells the story of one bishop going out to buy a loaf of bread and finding that 'even the baker' wanted to discuss whether there were one or two natures in Christ! [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 8. ] In fact, debate was beginning to rage over this issue. One catch-cry was: 'Cut him in two who divides Christ!' [ Cited by Brennan Hill, Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives (Mystic CT: Twenty-third Publications), 225. ] Alexandria and Antioch were in conflict.


Unfortunately, what followed in the first half of the fifth century was a most turbulent and unseemly period in Christian history that owed as much to political intrigue as to theological argument. There were rigged Councils, banished bishops, imprisonments, ecclesiastical witch-hunts and even physical fights resulting, in one case, with the death of a bishop (Flavian, patriach of Constantinople). The church was, in many ways, reflecting the power-play that was occurring in the Roman empire, a power-play that acted out the rivalries between East and West and eventually led to Marcion's unconstitutional seizure of the emperor's throne.


Significantly, it was Marcion, the new emperor, who called the Council to meet at Nicea to decide once and for all on this problem of understanding Jesus' identity. Fights broke out again and the Council had to be aborted. It then reconvened at Chalcedon in 451 CE. The central Christological issue was how to maintain appreciation of Jesus' identification both with God and with humanity. Pope Leo I stated the matter succinctly: 'It is as dangerous an evil to deny the truth of the human nature of Christ as it is to refuse to believe that his glory is equal to the Father'. [ Cited by Elizabeth Johnson, Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 9. ]


In many ways, the Council of Chalcedon provided a masterful compromise of Alexandrian and Antiochene teachings. Thus, it accepted (with the Antiochenes) that there were indeed 'two natures' in Christ so that he should be understood as both 'perfectly human' and 'perfectly divine'--'one in being with Father as to divinity and one in being with us as to humanity'. Consequently, Jesus' humanity is not just a costume or mask: he had a human body that suffered and a human will that made human decisions in the face of doubt and risk.


Yet (with the Alexandrians), Chalcedon also taught that Jesus' dual natures did not in any way compromise the essential unity of his 'person' since there is only 'one and the same Christ'. Effectively, Chalcedon had 'solved' the problem of Jesus' identity by using Greek categories of 'substance', 'person' and 'nature': Jesus Christ is of the same substance as the Father and the same substance as us; and although possessing two natures, divine and human, these are united in the one person. This unity of Christ's personhood was also expressed in the Council's teaching (against Nestorius d.451) that Mary is not only the mother of Christ ('christotokos') but, indeed, the mother of God ('theotokos'). To say otherwise, it reasoned, would be to 'split Christ'.


Following Chalcedon, two further so-called Christological Councils were held at Constantinople in 553 and 680-681 CE. respectively. Their major contribution was to refine aspects of Chalcedonian Christology. Constantinople II, for example, specified that Jesus possessed two fully functioning wills, divine and human. Nonetheless, it is fair to say that Christological development essentially stopped with Chalcedon. It became the benchmark upon which all further Christology was measured. Moreover, it seemed that christianity was exclusively tied to the 'one person--two natures' manner of expressing who Jesus was and is.

Only in 1951, on the fifthteenth hundred anniversary of Chalcedon, was there any serious attempt in Catholic theology to 'go beyond' Chalcedon. German theologian, Karl Rahner, wrote an essay entitled: Chalcedon: End or Beginning? [ Karl Rahner, Chalcedon: End or Beginning? redacted as Current Problems in Christology, Theological Investigations 1 (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 149-200. ] He spoke of the sorry and stagnant state of Christology which seemed to be so opposed to new ways of expressing the reality of Jesus and his significance for our world today. He was especially critical of the fact that most Christians seemed to ignore the deep truth that Chalcedon had tried to express--Jesus Christ, Word and Son of God, was indeed genuinely human. Evidently, Chalcedon and the classical Christological doctrines were in need of review.