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Orthodox Christology satisfies the requirements of the soul. Man's chief spiritual need is access to God through "a daysman that might lay his hand upon both." An exemplar, even though perfect, is not adequate to his need. The unio mystica can only be experienced by the leisured few.
To preserve intact the latter distinction, the proprium of the Son and His personal subsistence had to be kept distinct from the proprium and subsistence of the Father. We leave here the area of theology and come to that of Christology. We have exhibited the monophysite errors with respect to the doctrine of primal deity; we now proceed to analyse their views with respect to the incarnate Christ.
Each party took the recorded facts and interpreted them in accordance with their notion of what a mediator should be. Both parties studied the same facts; but the a priori of their thought differed, and so their conclusions differed. In the realm of Christology this a priori of thought is of paramount importance. Preconceived opinions inevitably colour our mental picture of Christ.
"You are in the clutches of Evil, and your desire is towards the Evil. I have not time or inclination to unfold an entire Christology now, but what you reject is the Ideal, and what you appraise is the Devil himself. God! God! How distressed I am for you! I would give my life to save you. But enough about it for the present; I have not time just now; I have to go out to dinner."
Aristotle allows immortality only to the universal reason. The psychic elements are condemned to perish with the body. There is no hope for the parts of the soul which are most intimately connected with the individual's experience. Monophysite Christology shares this fundamental defect. The monophysite thinker attempted to express the union of two natures within one experience.
It is his wonderful mingling of purity and love of righteousness with love of those who have sinned. You may find this in the ancient literature, as the Fathers describe that to which their souls cling. But this is not the point of view from which the dogma is organised. The Nicene Christology is not to be understood from this approach.
What is the bearing of Romans on the Christology of the Church at Rome? Not, that is to say, what is its evidence as to the thought of Paul, but how are certain phrases in it likely to have been interpreted? The most important passage is Romans i. 1-4: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, a called apostle, separated to God's gospel which He had promised beforehand by His prophets in Holy Scriptures concerning His Son, who became of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was appointed Son of God miraculously according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord." What is this likely to have meant to those who read it in Greek without any knowledge of a "Pre-existent" Christology? I think that they would have been impressed by the parallelisms in the sentence: kat
It was in conflict with monophysitism that the church of the fifth century brought to completion her dogmatic utterances about Christ; and the individual thinker to-day can gain the surest grasp of true Christology by examining the monophysite perversion. With this practical purpose in view, we now proceed to an analysis of the heresy. Monophysitism is a body of doctrine.
This rule holds as well in movements of religious thought. The monophysite strove for a lofty conception of deity but achieved a low one. He undermined the doctrine of impassibility by the very measures he took to secure it. In the technical language of Christology the monophysites' debased conception of deity was a consequence of "confounding the natures."
I think the dogmatic theologian would have some hesitation in giving an unqualified affirmative to this question, for the difficulties implied in it are practically insurmountable. Was the full consciousness of the eternal Word present in the babe of Bethlehem, for instance? If not, where was it? Questions like these cannot be answered on the lines of the conventional Christology.
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