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Updated: May 19, 2025
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.
It has, however, to be fought anew in each generation and in the experience of individual thinkers. Monophysitism is commonly regarded as a vagary of oriental thought, killed once and for all by a church council in the fifth century. That is a superficial view. Monophysitism is a hydra growth, and no Hercules can be found to exterminate it.
Monophysitism in respect of Christ's being shows itself to-day in negative rather than positive ways. To its subtle influence is traceable the capital defect of modern presentations of Christ, namely, that they make no appeal to the outsider. Christ is proclaimed as the solution of moral, social and industrial problems.
Ebionitism, related to docetism as realism to idealism, possessed equal vitality and equal adaptability. It showed itself in various humanistic interpretations of Christ. Of these the most elaborate was Nestorianism, which exerted the most insistent and immediate negative influence on the early growth of monophysitism.
The doctrinal edifice in which Calvary is of ornamental and not of structural value has monophysitism for its foundation. Christ's mission is misunderstood to-day as well as His cosmic work. In certain religious quarters where zeal is not balanced by learning, His mission as the founder of a religious society is forgotten.
All monophysites united in condemning the diphysite doctrine that after the incarnation Christ was and is "in two natures." Such a Christ they would not worship. It was "the image with two faces that the Council of Chalcedon had set up." They adopted the Athanasian phrase, "One incarnate nature of God the Word," as their battle-cry. Monophysitism can make out a strong prima facie case.
It is a dogmatic system, in which the individual dogmata are controlled by a principle or dominant idea. As all the particular doctrines of monophysitism depend on this principle, and, as it is not properly a theological concept, but one borrowed from philosophy, we may call it "the metaphysical basis of monophysitism."
If Christian thinkers took the trouble to analyse the basis of their beliefs about Christ, they would not halt, as they so often do, at the stage of monophysitism. If they laid bare to the foundations the structure of their faith, the danger of error would be reduced to a minimum. Viewed from the standpoint of timeless reason, monophysitism is based on a definite metaphysical idea.
We have used this method, and have found that the roots of the heresy lie in spiritual monism. In subsequent chapters we shall analyse its origins as a historical system, its specific tenets and its practical consequences. It will then be seen that the spirit of monism pervades the whole system. The monophysitism of the fifth century had its roots in the past as well as in the a priori.
Redemption becomes improvement by effort and self-help, or a constant endeavour after a private ideal of conduct. Monophysitism shows itself also in the modern tendency to narrow the scope of redemption. Partial salvation is offered as a substitute for the salvation of the entire man. This tendency is a natural result of narrowing the import of the incarnation.
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