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Updated: May 4, 2025
Harnack, "History of Dogma," vol. iv. chap. ii. p. 160. The distinctive doctrine of monophysitism, that from which the name of the heresy is taken, is the assertion that there is but one nature, the divine nature, in Christ. There existed some difference of opinion among the monophysites as to whether any degree of reality might be ascribed to the human nature.
Theodore Askidas and Domitian, by submitting to the imperial edict and the condemnation of Origen, kept their places and secured afresh their influence, which the monks of Palestine, who were not Origenistic, felt severely. He thought he was bringing back the Monophysites to orthodoxy. He was really casting a new ferment into the existing agitation.
It snares the mind through the senses and creates a fictitious -appearance of solid reality in sensuous objects. It makes pretensions to goodness and attaches to itself a spurious value. The only remedy is self-denial, denial of existence to the world, denial of credence to the senses, denial of gratification to the passions, desires, and inclinations. The monophysites were mystics.
Augustine, which were contained in one of the extracts made in the Review, and which had escaped my observation. "Securus judicat orbis terrarum." He repeated these words again and again, and, when he was gone, they kept ringing in my ears. "Securus judicat orbis terrarum;" they were words which went beyond the occasion of the Donatists: they applied to that of the Monophysites.
Personality was to the monophysites a terra incognita; and it was in large measure their devotion to Aristotle's system that made them deaf to the teaching of the catholic church. After this sketch of the Aristotelian features recognisable in monophysitism, we turn to the other great pagan philosophy that assisted in the shaping of the heresy.
The churches of Alexandria were delivered to the Catholics, the religion of the Monophysites was proscribed in Egypt, and a law was revived which excluded the natives from the honors and emoluments of the state. Part VI. A more important conquest still remained, of the patriarch, the oracle and leader of the Egyptian church.
The prevailing faction will naturally inculcate the duty of submission, nor is it less natural that dissenters should feel and assert the principles of freedom. Under the rod of persecution, the Nestorians and Monophysites degenerated into rebels and fugitives; and the most ancient and useful allies of Rome were taught to consider the emperor not as the chief, but as the enemy of the Christians.
An offshoot of docetism that flourished among the monophysites is the aphthartodocetic heresy. This is of considerable historical importance. Large numbers of the Syrian and Egyptian monophysites embraced it, and seceded from the parent church. It became part of the official creed of Armenian Christianity, and that church has not repudiated it to this day.
The monophysites were quite consistent here. To deny will of nature is an elementary mistake in psychology. Only a tyro in introspection will ascribe will directly to personality. A one-willed two-natured personality is little short of a psychological monstrosity. An attempt to rally Christendom round such a figure was bound to fail.
Not a few leaders of religious thought, in intention orthodox, in fact remain monophysites, through inability to analyse their beliefs or through a false sense of security, founded on the opinion that the age of heresy is past. It is commonly supposed that belief in the deity of Christ constitutes Christianity. That supposition is wrong. Arius was not the only heresiarch.
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