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The Nestorians were far more active propagandists. Worship is a very high type of service; but worship becomes selfish and sickens into sentiment, if it neglects the inspiring tonic of contact with human need. The monophysite Christology encouraged that form of self-sacrifice, whose goal is Nirvana, which lapses lazily into the cosmic soul and loses itself there in contemplation and ecstasy.
He had rendered his task difficult by his rejection of the Law, but he won his fight, and the permanent association of Jewish morality with the Christian Church and its Hellenic Christology and sacraments was the result. In the same way Paul contended successfully for the Jewish doctrine of a resurrection, though with some modifications.
On this point their Christology passed through several stages of development, the later stages showing progressive improvement on the earlier. They distinguished three senses of the word "composition." First, they said, it might mean "absorption," as when a drop of water is absorbed in a jar of wine.
It is impossible and undesirable to expound at length this general theory; it must suffice to notice its bearings on Christology. In the first place, it seems to have overcome the tendency of Logos theology to produce Docetism.
These theses supply what is requisite for an intelligent appreciation of Christology. Without them Christology is a battle of shadows; with them it becomes a practical problem of first importance for religious minds.
Such a Christ the latent monophysitism of our thinking hides from our view. The doctrines of Christ's person and of His work are intimately associated. What He did depended on what He was. Christology and Soteriology act and react upon each other. If Christology is crippled, Soteriology goes lame. Christ takes His stand in the centre of the cosmic process in virtue of His unique being.
These high far-reaching hopes rest on the doctrines of catholic Christology. Christ assumed our nature complete in body and psychic parts. He did so with a purpose, and that purpose could be none other than the redemption of the body and of all the psychic elements. To the mystic, body and human activities may seem only transient and unworthy of a place in heaven. Such is false spirituality.
As we develop it, we shall endeavour to show that it supplies that metaphysical idea which forms the basis of catholic Christology. The two previous solutions failed. They do not satisfy the philosopher and they mislead the theologian. The one separates God from the world; the other merges them. Thus both, in effect, abandon the original enterprise.
It was impossible that such views as these should not soon be taken up and applied to the fluctuating Christology of the time.
Christian teaching is becoming more and more esoteric. In the language of Christology, a diphysite Christ is not preached. His human nature is kept in the background. It is not portrayed in arresting colours. If the apostles and apostolic men had preached the impersonal redeemer of modern religious thought, they would never have won the world for Christ.
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