The Threatened Series - 4
The plot thickens; let me try to thin it up a little.
In the latter half of the third century, the human soul of Christ is
the dog which did not bark. Of course, just because a dog doesn't
bark, it doesn't mean that there is no dog; but it was remarkably
quiet. Nobody has much to say about the soul of Christ.
People thought about the Logos, or Word of God, as being united with
flesh (Greek 'sarx') in the person of Jesus. They were encouraged to
do so by the verse of St John's Gospel, 1:14, 'kai o Logos sarx
egeneto' - 'and the Word became flesh'. They regarded the Logos as the
sentient, rational component in Jesus, equivalent to the soul in
anybody else.
But it is evident that Jesus suffered. Harm done to the flesh is
clearly felt by the soul. We do not say 'my flesh hurts, but I feel no
pain'. The 'I' is precisely what feels the pain. Now if the 'I' in
the case of Jesus was the Logos, then the Logos suffered.
But God is impassible, that is to say he does not suffer.
Therefore, said the Arians, the Logos is not God, but a creature,
capable of suffering.
An alternative approach was to say that Jesus did not suffer, that he
only 'seemed' to suffer. People who believed this were called
'Docetists', from the Greek 'dokeo', 'I seem' (No, there wasn't a
heretic called Docetus!) The Docetists had existed long before
Arianism, perhaps even in NT times. 1 John 4:1-3 may be an attack on
Docetism: "every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come
in the flesh is from God" - the implication being, that those who
denied that Jesus Christ had come in the flesh, but had only 'seemed'
to take flesh, were not of God. Polycarp, early in the second century,
relates that St John fled from the public baths on hearing that
Cerinthus, a Docetist, was inside, fearing that the building would fall
in on the enemy of the truth. The first person to have used the word
'Docetism' seems however to have been Serapion, Bishop of Antioch
(190-203).
With hindsight we can see that the answer to both heresies was to
insist that Christ had a human soul, which suffered, while the divine
Logos, of one substance with the Father, did not suffer; and such was
the faith eventually encapsulated in the orthodox Christian
formularies. Cf. the verse of the 'Quicunque Vult': 'Perfect God, and
perfect Man: of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.' But
this was not obvious at the time, and it took a long time for this
position to evolve. the evolution of that position is, in fact, the
substance of this series.
O Krafty Doctor, thou art mighty yet! You said we would have to start
long before Nicæa; and so we do. But I hope to move on a little
tomorrow.
The Supple Doctor.
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