CHAPTER THIRD.

ADOPTIANISM AND THE COUNCIL OF FRANKFORT, A.D. 794.

FEW phenomena in the history of dogmas have been so variously judged, or present greater difficulties, than Adoptianism. By contemporaries, it was identified with principles commonly held to be Nestorian; by those who followed after, and who were capable of discriminating Nestorianism in its actual historical form from the vulgar notions of Nestorianism, it was at all events mixed up therewith. Others, especially Walch,* consider the difference between it and the orthodox doctrine to have consisted more in form than in substance; or regard it as a logical following out of principles sanctioned by the Church, by which the inner inconsistencies of the orthodox system had been irresistibly dragged into the light. Others, again, look on the controversy more in the light of a first exercise of subtlety and ingenuity on the part of the awakening intellect of the barbarian nations.

At the very outset, it must be assumed to be utterly improbable, that so important a contest should have been a mere revival of long-forgotten disputes. The most eminent men in the Church of that period measured weapons with each other in connection with this question. On the one side was ranged by far the larger portion of the Spanish Church, with its head Elipantus, Archbishop of Toledo, who took his stand on old traditions, and with Felix of Urgellis, who was the chief representative of Adoptianism, and exhibited unusual acuteness, culture, and acquaintance with the writings of the Fathers. On the other side we find Alcuin, teacher and friend of Charlemagne; the Asturian Bishops, Beatus and Etherius; Paulinus of Aquileia, Agobard of Lyons; with all the men from the German, Frankish, Italian, and British Churches, who had occupied themselves with this matter at the Councils of Ratisbon (in the year 792), Frankfort, Rome (in 799), and

* Ch. W. F. Walch, author of the "Entwurf einer vollständ. Historie der Ketzereien," and other works on Church History, published during the last century. Tr.

Aix-la-Chapelle (in 800). There is unquestionably a resemblance between Adoptianism and some earlier phenomena,especially between it and the actual historical form of Nestorianism. Nor, certainly, did the keen attention devoted by the Church, not merely to Nestorius, but also to Theodore of Mopsuestia, in the Three-Chapter Controversy, and especially at the Council held in the year 553, fail to help on the revival of the ideas of the school of Antioch. The spirit of persecution did not shrink from uttering its anathemas even over the ashes and works of men who had died at peace with the Church; and the consequence thereof was, that many of their thoughts were scattered like seed far and wide, and, falling into fit soil, brought forth appropriate fruit. This was especially the case with such districts as North Africa and Spain, which were farther removed from the influence and authority of the Byzantine Court than others. But Adoptianism must not, on this ground, be regarded as a kind of straggler, which had lagged behind in some remote part of the advancing host of the Church. It was neither an unvanquished remainder of the ancient Nestorianism, nor an old heresy revived by those who were ignorant of what had gone before. We know enough of the Spanish Church to be able to affirm that it did not constitute a Western counterpart to the Christians of Chaldæa, but stood in active intercourse with the rest of the West, and with North Africa; and that, notwithstanding all its peculiarities, and the independence of its spirit, it fostered a continuous fellowship with the Romish Church. We know also that, in its numerous Councils, particularly in that of Toledo, it displayed a theological and dogmatical life, which favourably distinguished it during the seventh and eighth centuries; and that, in the course of many external and internal struggles, it succeeded in developing a kind of established national character, principally under the leadership of the Archbishops of Toledo. The main point, however, is, that notwithstanding the similarity between the mental tendencies at work in it and Nestorianism, Adoptianism had a peculiar distinctive character, and that in virtue thereof it brought its influence to bear on the problem in the precise form in which it was presented in the eighth century, but not as it was presented at the time of Nestorius. If we can succeed in showing this to have been the case, no further

proof will be needed that it was not a mere production of ingenious subtlety.

Nor, on the other hand, can Adoptianism be explained merely from the opposition raised to remaining Arian or Sabellian elements; or from the controversy with the Bonosians in one direction, and that with Migetius in another.1 We cannot, of course, deny that even the school of Antioch endeavoured to forefend Arian explanations of Scripture, by distinguishing more carefully between the divine and human aspects of the Person of Christ, and by referring the lower predicates to the latter, in order to keep them away from the Son of God. Besides this, neither the opposition raised by them to Arianism, nor that to an Ebionitic view like that of Bonosus, furnished a sufficiently urgent reason for applying the predicate viòs Betòs to the humanity of Christ: they must rather have been influenced by a positive interest in the accurate determination of their own view.

The long-continued struggles with the Arianism of the West Goths in Spain, unquestionably prepared the way, to a certain extent, for this new controversy. Still more did the sects of the Priscillians and the Sabellians (to the latter sect Migetius belonged, who appears to have been controverted and refuted by Elipantus about the year 780), as also Monophysitism, which for a long period had been diffusing itself from Africa throughout Spain, loudly call upon the Church to guard against the reduction of the humanity of Christ to the position of the mere organ of a theophany, and against attributing passibility and mutability to the divine nature. In opposition to Monophysitism, the Spaniards avowed themselves at the Eleventh and Fourteenth Councils of Toledo Triphysites; they also raised their voice against Monotheletism. During this latter controversy the Spanish Church evidently accustomed itself, in antagonism to every species of commixture, to give prominence to the distinctions in the Person of Christ. Indeed, we find even as early as the end of the sixth century that a doctrine of the Trinity was formed in a similar spirit; and that, even relatively to that point, the Synod of Toledo took the lead

1 Bonosus of Sardica, about the year 390, regarded Christ as a mere dopted man. Migetius taught that the Logos became a person in Jesus, he Holy Ghost in Paul, and the Father in David.

of the movement in the Church. In addition to these negative occasions of the rise of Adoptianism, some positive causes may also be adduced: for example, the numerous remaining adherents of the school of Antioch, particularly in North Africa, which had probably acquired strength in the course of their conflicts with the Arianism of the barbarian peoples, and from the countenance afforded them by the Dyotheletic North African Synods previously mentioned. We may no less probably assume that the amalgamation which took place between the early Christian population of Spain and the arianizing Germanic tribes, gave rise to a culture which, even theologically, attached great importance both to precision of thought, and to the idea of the free personality of man.

All these are elements which must be taken into consideration in accounting for the rise of Adoptianism. But how these negative and positive factors came to produce the Christological result presented to us in Adoptianism, can only be completely understood, when we call to mind what stage the dogma of the Person of Christ had reached, prior to its appearance. Adoptianism was not one of those phenomena of Church History which might as easily have made its appearance earlier than it actually did; nor was it a mere repristination of Nestorianism ; but it presupposed the problem of Christology to be in that precise position which we have found it then occupying in the Greek Church. The negative and positive factors just alluded to fitted into the Christological results previously arrived at, and relatively to which the Spanish Church had by no means remained ignorant or indifferent. Accordingly, when the problem, in the form in which it presented itself to the mind of the Church after the Dyotheletic Synod of the year 680, was brought into contact with the factors embraced by the Spanish Church, the result was Adoptianism.

Adoptianism, we say, is decidedly discriminated from Nestorianism. Adoptianists made no objection, for example, to the term OEOTÓKOS; but against the doctrine of the duality of the persons they decidedly protested, not merely as an afterthought, but from the very commencement. Again, from the very beginning they taught that the Logos assumed humanity; but not that Christ owed His exaltation to His virtue, as the Nestorians, and especially Theodore of Mopsuestia, had held. On this

latter subject their language more resembled that which the Church itself might have employed, so long as the state of exaltation had not yet been completely imported into that of humiliation, but a progress from the latter to the former continued to be recognised.1 The viòs Oeròs of the Antiocheians was undoubtedly also an adopted Son, but this idea did not form the central feature of their system; and they regarded, at all events more strongly than the Adoptianists, the attainment of this rank as the reward of moral desert. As far as concerned Christology, the Nestorians occupied themselves with the sphere of the natures, and only secondarily, nay, even unwillingly, with that of the personality; being in so far opposed to the Monophysites. The Adoptianists, on the other hand, who were not under the necessity of fighting the battle of the duality of the wills and natures for themselves, but found them already recognised by the Church, occupied themselves with the sphere of the personality, whose unity had hitherto been rather taken for granted than made the object of a definite conception. It is worthy of note, moreover, that, as might be anticipated from the character of the peoples which took part in the Adoptianistic Controversy, the term "Person" was now, for the first time, understood to denote the "Ego." Previously, as is clear from the view taken of the Tóσraois by John of Damascus, "persona" had denoted predominantly the constitutive principle of existence; or even the σvμßeßŋkòs, the accident of the genus, of the common substance; or the existence of the substance in particularity, the particular mode of the existence of the substance. Owing to the vacillation between different views, the Greek writers on Christology were brought, as we have seen, into very great confusion.2

Adoptianists took their stand, consequently, on the previous decisions in favour of two natures and two wills. But at the same time they maintained that, logically, this duality

1 Compare Alcuini opp., ed. Frobenius, 1777, c. Felic. L. iv. 5, p. 823, v. 1, 2, i. 15; compare Paulini Aq. L. iii., c. Felic. Ven. 1734. Agobard. adv. dogma Felic.

2 Especially as that was obliged to be in great part retracted in connection with the Trinity which had been posited in connection with Christology:-for example, that the hypostasis is merely a ovμßeßnxós of the ουσία.

* See Note L. App. ii.