Introduction and Background
“The Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man’s nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin; being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God, and very man, yet one Christ, the only Mediator between God and man.”
Westminster Confession 8.2
“And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and in age, and in grace, with God and men.” — Luke 2:52
With my last few articles, I wrote on the Trinity and the Deity of Christ. This was to lay the proper foundation so we could then go into church history and different heresies that arose. The first heresy I want to dive into is called Apollinarianism. It was named after Apollinaris of Laodicea. He became bishop in Laodicea in 361.1 Apollinaris was a staunch defender of the Deity of Christ and was even highly esteemed by Athanasius who was known for strongly defending the Deity of Christ against the Arians.2 (Arianism will be written on at later time) Orthodox Christians affirmed that Jesus was God, and they also affirmed his full humanity, but the question that the early church struggled with was how to remain biblically balanced in this area without falling into some heresy that would either deny Jesus’s full humanity or deny him being fully God. The Hypostatic Union is the historical and theological term that gives us the proper distinctions where we can affirm Jesus as fully God and also affirm that Jesus is fully man. The Hypostatic Union means that Jesus is one person with two distinct natures. These two natures are unified but they are not mixed with one another. If the two natures are mixed you are left with some type of third being that is not truly God or truly man.3 Jesus is also not 50% God and 50% man, but he is 100% God and 100% man. For Jesus’s atonement to have any saving power for humanity, there must be a real human life that is being offered. If not, his atonement cannot save mankind. For Christ to fulfill his role as Mediator between God and man, Jesus must be fully God, and he must also be fully man. John Calvin in book two of his Institutes of the Christian Religion said, “When it is said that the Word was made flesh, we must not understand it as if he were either changed into flesh, or confusedly intermingled with flesh, but that he made choice of the Virgin’s womb as a temple in which he might dwell. He who was the Son of God became the Son of Man, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of substance. For we maintain that the divinity was so conjoined and united with the humanity, that the entire properties of each nature remain entire, and yet the two natures constitute only one Christ.”4
Where Apollinaris Went Wrong
As previously stated, Apollinaris strongly defended the Deity of Christ which on the surface is good, but he defended the Deity of Christ at the expense of Christ’s full humanity. A brief definition of Apollinarianism comes from Nick Needham in his book 2000 Years of Christ’s Power: The Age of the Early Church Fathers which states, “Apollinarius held that in the incarnation, the Son of God did not have a human mind (or spirit); His infinite divine mind took the place of a finite human mind. He was thus a divine mind dwelling in a human body. This doctrine was condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 381.”5 Apollinaris believed man was a trichotomy instead of dichotomy. This means he believed that humans are made up of the body, the soul, and the spirit (trichotomy), instead of just a body and soul (dichotomy). It was this error that helped create the view of Jesus being a human body with a divine mind. In Apollinaris’s view, the human mind was the source of all human weakness and sin, so Jesus had to have a divine mind to remain perfectly sinless.6
The question must be asked, what makes humans truly human? Is it just having a physical body, or is it also having a mind and being able to will, reason, and make decisions? Both are equally important in being a human being and both will be fully redeemed, but what really constitutes personhood is our ability to reason and make decisions. If you take that away, we are just a mass of cells. If Jesus does not have a human mind, he cannot redeem the human mind. He can only redeem our physical bodies and our physical bodies are not evil. We can use them to carry out wicked desires, but in and of themselves they are not evil. Our sin starts with our hearts and what we desire. We always act on what our strongest desire is, and as fallen creatures before a holy God, we not only need to be physically redeemed, but we need our minds redeemed so we can carry out God’s will and think Christ’s thoughts after him. If Jesus does not have a human mind, he cannot redeem our minds because he was not like us in that respect. It takes Jesus having a human mind for our minds to be redeemed. Secondly, Jesus grew in wisdom, age, and grace with God and men. This could not be possible if what Jesus possessed was a divine mind because a divine mind cannot grow in wisdom and grace and age. John Calvin later in the same chapter of book 2 of his Institutes said, “Again, his being called the servant of the Father, his being said to grow in stature, and wisdom, and favor with God and man, not to seek his own glory, not to know the last day, not to speak of himself, not to do his own will, his being seen and handled, apply entirely to his humanity.”7 The point being that everything that would constitute as human personhood, Christ possesses since he is truly human in every way.
Chalcedonian Creed
“We all, with one voice, confess our Lord Jesus Christ, one and the same Son, at once complete in deity and complete in humanity, truly God and truly man, consisting of a rational soul and body; of the same essence as the Father in His deity, of the same essence as us in His humanity, like us in all things apart from sin; begotten of the Father before all ages as regards His deity, the same born of the virgin Mary, the birth-giver of God, as regards His humanity, in the last days, for us and our salvation; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of the natures being in no way abolished because of the union, but rather the characteristic property of each nature being preserved, and coming together to form one person and one hypostasis, He is not split or divided into two persons, but He is one and the same Son and Only-begotten, God the Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ, as formerly the prophets and later Jesus Christ Himself have taught us about Him, and as it has been handed down to us by the Creed of the Fathers.” Council of Chalcedon AD 451 Retrieved from the first volume of 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power, p. 304-305
Bibliography
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion: Book 2. Moscow, ID. Canon Press, 2020.
Needham, Nick. 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power: The Age of the Early Church Fathers. Scotland, UK. Christian Focus Publications Ltd, 2016.
Schaff, Philip and David Schley Schaff. History of the Christian Church Volume 3: Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity from Constantine the Great to Gregory the Great, A.D. 311-600. New York, NY. Sagwan Press, 2015.
Recommended Reading
2,000 Years of Christ’s Power by Nick Needham (There are four volumes. For Apollinarianism, you can find that in the first volume. However, the whole series is important to have).
History of the Christian Church Volume 3 by Philip Schaff