Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/52

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34
APOLLINARIS THE YOUNGER
APOLLINARIS THE YOUNGER

his literary labours. When the edict of Julian, A.D. 362, forbade the Christians to read Greek literature, he undertook with the aid of his son to supply the void by reconstructing the Scriptures on the classical models. Thus the whole Biblical history down to Saul's accession was turned into 24 books of Homeric hexameters, each superscribed, like those of the Iliad, by a letter of the alphabet. Lyrics, tragedies, and comedies, after the manner of Pindar, Euripides, and Menander, followed. Even the Gospels and Epistles were adapted to the form of Socratic disputation. Two works alone remain as samples of their indomitable zeal: a tragedy entitled Christus Patiens, in 2601 lines, which has been edited among the works of Gregory Nazianzen; and a version of the Psalms, in Homeric hexameters. The most that can be said of this Psalter is that it is better than the tragedy, and that as a whole it fully bears out the reputation of the poet (Basil. Ep. 273, 406) that he was never at a loss for an expression. Socrates, who is more trustworthy than Sozomen (v. 18), ascribes the O.T. poems to the father (iii. 16), and adds that the son as the greater rhetorician devoted his energies to converting the Gospels and Epistles into Platonic dialogues. He likewise mentions a treatise on grammar compiled by the elder Apollinaris, χριστιανικῷ τύπῳ. For different opinions as to the authorship of father and son, cf. Vossius, de Hist. Graec. ii. 18; de Poet. Graec. c. 9; Duport, Praef. ad Metaph. Psalm. (Lond. 1674).

The Metaphrasis Psalmorum was published at Paris 1552; by Sylburg, at Heidelberg, 1596; and subsequently in various collections of the Fathers. The latest edition is that in Migne's Patr. Gk. xxiii.

[E.M.Y.]

Apollinaris the Younger, bp. of Laodicea, flourished in the latter half of the 4th cent., and was at first highly esteemed, even by Athanasius and Basil, for his classical culture, piety, and adhesion to the Nicene Creed during the Arian controversy, until he introduced a Christological heresy which is called after him, and which in some respects prepared the way for Monophysitism. He assisted his father in rewriting the Christian Scriptures in imitation of the style of Homer, Menander, etc., mentioned in the preceding article. He also wrote in defence of Christianity against Julian and Porphyry; of orthodoxy against the Manicheans, Arians, Marcellus, Eunomius, and other heretics; Biblical commentaries, and other works, of which only fragments remain. Jerome enjoyed his instruction, A.D. 374. He did not secede from the communion of the church and begin to form a sect of his own till 375. He died about 392. After his death his followers, who were not numerous, were divided into two parties, the Polemians and Valentinians. His doctrine was condemned by a synod of Alexandria (not naming him), by two synods at Rome under Damasus (377 and 378), and by the second oecumenical council (381). Imperial decrees prohibited the public worship of the Apollinarists (388, 397, 428), until during the 5th cent. they were absorbed partly by the orthodox, partly by the Monophysites. But the peculiar Christology of Apollinaris has

reappeared from time to time, in a modified shape, as an isolated theological opinion.

Apollinaris was the first to apply the results of the Nicene controversy to Christology proper, and to call the attention of the church to the psychical and pneumatic element in the humanity of Christ; but in his zeal for the true deity of Christ, and fear of a double personality, he fell into the error of a partial denial of His true Humanity. Adopting the psychological trichotomy of Plato (σῶμα, ψυχή, πνεῦμα), for which he quoted I. Thess. v. 23 and Gal. v. 17, he attributed to Christ a human body (σῶμα) and a human soul (the ψυχὴ ἄλογος, the anima animans which man has in common with the animal), but not a rational spirit (νοῦς, πνεῦμα, ψυχὴ λογική, anima rationalis), and put in the place of the latter the divine Logos. In opposition to the idea of a mere connexion of the Logos with the man Jesus, he wished to secure an organic unity of the two, and so a true incarnation; but he sought this at the expense of the most important constituent of man. He reached only a θεός σαρκοφόρος, as Nestorianism only an ἄνθρωπος θεοφόρος, instead of the proper θεάνθρωπος. He appealed to the fact that the Scripture says, "the Word was made flesh "—not spirit; "God was manifest in the flesh," etc. To which Gregory Nazianzen justly replied that in these passages the term σάρξ was used by synecdoche for the whole human nature. In this way Apollinaris established so close a connexion of the Logos with human flesh, that all the divine attributes were transferred to the human nature, and all the human attributes to the divine, and the two merged in one nature in Christ. Hence he could speak of a crucifixion of the Logos, and a worship of His flesh. He made Christ a middle being between God and man, in Whom, as it were, one part divine and two parts human were fused in the unity of a new nature. He even ventured to adduce created analogies of mixtures in nature. Christ, said he, is οὔτε ἄνθρωπος ὅλος, οὔτε θεός, ἀλλὰ θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπου μίξις. On the other hand, he regarded the orthodox view of a union of full humanity with a full divinity in one person—of two wholes in one whole—as an absurdity, in a similar category with the mythological figure of the Minotaur. But the Apollinarian idea of the union of the Logos with a truncated human nature might be itself more justly compared with this monster. Starting from the Nicene homoousion as to the Logos, but denying the completeness of Christ's humanity, he met Arianism half-way, which likewise put the divine Logos in the place of the human spirit in Christ. But he strongly asserted Christ's unchangeableness, while Arians taught His changeableness (τρεπτότης).

The faith of the church revolted against such a mutilated and stunted humanity of Christ, which necessarily involved also a merely partial redemption. The incarnation is an assumption of the entire human nature, sin only excluded. The ἐνσάρκωσις is ἐνανθρώπησις. To be a full and complete Redeemer, Christ must be a perfect man (τέλειος ἄνθρωπος). The spirit or rational soul is the most important element in man,