68 CHAPTER SEVEN human soul. At this point, however, Apollinarius introduced a thought of deep significance that the spirit in Christ was human spirit, although divine. If man was made in the image of God, the Divine Word is not foreign to that human spirit which is in his likeness, but is rather the true perfection of its image. If, therefore, the Lord had the divine Word instead of the human spirit of other men, he is not less human, but more so for the difference.
THE RESTORED HOMOEAN SUPREMACY. a long way downhill since young Athanasius had sung his song of triumph over fallen heathenism. Roman vice and Syrian frivolity, Eastern asceticism and Western legalism, combined to preach, in spite of Christianity, that the sinfulness of mankind is essential. So instead of following out the pregnant hint of Athanasius that sin is no true part of human nature (else were God the author of evil), Apollinarius cut the knot by refusing the Son of Man a human spirit as a thing by necessity sinful. Too thoughtful to slur over the difficulty like Pelagius, Furthermore, the Word which in Christ was human he was yet too timid to realize the possibility of a conspirit, was eternal. Apart then from the incarnation, the quest of sin by man, even though that man were Christ Word was archetypal man as well as God. Thus we reach himself. the still more solemn thought that the incarnation is not a mere expedient to get rid of sin, but the historApollinarius and his school contributed not a little ic revelation of what was latent in the Word from all to the doctrinal confusion of the East. His ideas were eternity. Had man not sinned, the Word must still have current for some time in various forms, and are atcome among us, albeit not through shame and death. It tacked in some of the later works of Athanasius; but it was his nature that he should come. If he was man from was not till about 375 that they led to a definite schism, eternity, it was his nature to become in time like men on marked by the consecration of the presbyter Vitalis to earth; and it is his nature to remain forever man. And the bishopric of Antioch. From this time, Apollinarian as the Word looked down on mankind, so mankind bishops disputed many of the Syrian sees with Nicenes looked upward to the Word. The spirit in man is a frail and Anomeans. and shadowy thing apart from Christ, and men are not Their adherents were also scattered over Asia, and true men till they have found in him their immutable supplied one more element of discord to the noisy popand sovereign guide. Thus the Word and man do not ulace of Constantinople. confront each other as alien beings. They are joined together in their inmost nature, and (may we say it?) each The declining years of Athanasius were spent in receives completion from the other. peace. Valens had restored him in good faith, and never afterwards molested him. If Lucius the Arian returned The system of Apollinarius is a mighty outline to Alexandria to try his chance as bishop, the officials whose details we can hardly even now fill in; yet as a gave him no connivance, nothing but sorely needed system it is certainly a failure. His own contemporaries shelter from the fury of the mob. Arianism was nearly may have done him something less than justice, but they extinct in Egypt. could not follow his daring flights of thought when they saw plain errors in his teaching. After all, ApollinariOne of his last public acts was to receive an embassy us reaches no true incarnation. The Lord is something from Marcellus, who was still living in extreme old age very like us, but he is not one of us. The spirit is sure- at Ancyra. Some short time before 371, the deacon Luly an essential part of man, and without a true human genius presented to him a confession on behalf of the spirit, he could have no true human choice or growth or ‘innumerable multitude’ who still owned Marcellus for life; and indeed Apollinarius could not allow him any. their father. His work is curtailed also like his manhood, for (so Gregory of Nyssa put it) the spirit which the Lord did not assume is not redeemed. Apollinarius understood even better than Athanasius the kinship of true human nature to its Lord, and applied it with admirable skill to explain the incarnation as the expression of the eternal divine nature. But he did not see so well as Athanasius that sin is a mere intruder among men. It was not a hopeful age in which he lived. The world had gone
‘We are not heretics, as we are slandered. We specially anathematize Arianism, confessing, like our fathers at Nicea, that the Son is no creature, but of the essence of the Father and co- essential with the Father; and by the Son we mean no other than the Word. Next we anathematize Sabellius, for we confess the eternity and reality of the Son and the Holy Spirit. We anathematize also the Anomeans, in spite of their pretence not to be Arians. We anathematize finally the Arianizers who separate