III. The Nicene Christology, from 325 to 381: This is the result of the struggle with Arianism and semi-Arianism, which agitated the Eastern Church for more than half a century. The Arian heresy denied the strict deity of Christ (his coequality with the Father), and taught that he is a subordinate divinity, different in essence from God (Gk.
hetero-ousios ), preexisting before the world, yet not eternal ("there was a time when he was not"), himself a creature of the will of God out of nothing (Gk.
ktisma ex ouk onton), who created this present world, and became incarnate for our salvation: Semi-Arianism held as untenable middle ground between the Arian
hetero-ousia and the orthodox
homo-ousia or coequality of the Son with the Father, and asserted the
homoi-ousia, or
similarity of essence, which was a very elastic term, and might be contracted into an Arian, or stretched into an orthodox, sense, according to the general spirit and tendency of the men who held it.
In opposition to these heresies, Athanasius of Alexandria (" the father of orthodoxy") and the three Cappadocian bishops-Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa-maintained and defended with superior ability, vigor, and perseverance, the homo-ousia, i.e., the essential oneness of the Son with the Father, or his eternal divinity, as the corner-stone of the whole Christian system. This doctrine triumphed in the councils
of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), and is expressed in the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed, which has stood ever since-like an immovable rock:
"(We believe). . . in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds [God of God], Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary," etc.
See ARIANISM; ATHANASIUS; CONSTANTINOPOLITAN CREED; NICAEA, COUNCILS OF.
4. An Answer to Heresies. This finds its normal expression in the Chalcedonian statement of 451, (see below, § 2). It was the answer of the orthodox Church to the heresies relating to the proper constitution of Christ's divine-human person, of which the chief were three, viz., (1) Apollinarianism, a partial denial of the humanity of Christ. Apollinaris (the Younger) of Laodicea (q.v.; d. 390), on the basis of the Platonic trichotomy, ascribed to Christ a human body (Gk.
soma) and animal soul (
> Psyche alogos ), but not a human spirit or reason (
psyche logike, nous, pneuma ); he put the divine Logos in the place of the rational soul, and thus substituted a
theos sarkophoros for a real
theantropos- a mixed middle being for a divine-human person. From this error it follows, either that the rational soul of man was not redeemed, or that it needed no redemption. (2) Nestorianiam (from Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, d. in exile 440; see NESTORIUS) admitted the full deity and the full humanity of Christ, but put them into loose mechanical conjunction, or affinity (Gk.
synapheia), rather than a vital and personal union
(henosis); and hence it objected to the unscriptural term " mother of God " (Gk.
theotokos , Lat.
Deipara), as applied to the Virgin Mary, while willing to call her " mother of Christ " (
Christotokos). (3) Eutychianism (from Eutychea, presbyter at Constantinople, d. after 451; see EUTYCHIANISM) is the very opposite of Neatorianism, and sacrificed the distinction of the two natures in Christ to the unity of the person to such an extent as to make the incarnation an absorption of the human nature by the divine, or a deification of human nature, even of the body: hence the Eutychiana thought it proper to use the phrases "God is born," "God suffered," "God was crucified," "God died."
