(From Notes, dated August 22, 1835.)
§ 1.
The Apollinarian heresy is at first sight antithetical to Arianism; Arians denying our Lord’s true divinity, and Apollinaris His true humanity.
[For a good and interesting account of Apollinaris, vid. Wake against Bossuet, Appendix in vol. 28 of “Popish Controversy;” vid. also Petavius de Incarn. i. 6, v. 11-13, and Tillemont, Mémoires, t. 7, p. 602, edit. 1706. Basnage and Bayle are unfair, selecting from the report of early writers about his opinions just what they choose.]
2. But only at first sight; for the very tenet, which constitutes the Apollinarian heresy, viz. the denial of the existence of any mind or intellect, [nous], in our Lord’s human nature, was already professed, and in a still bolder form, by the Arians.
[The Arians denied, not only the [nous] in our Lord’s soul, but they refused to ascribe to Him a soul of any kind; whereas the Apollinarians did not deny Him a soul, so that intellect was away, that is, an animal soul. This was not among the original Arian errors. Perhaps they were cut short in their full profession of heresy by the prompt indignation which their denial of our Lord’s divinity
excited. Denial of His human soul is not found as one of their tenets in the letters of Alexander, Arius, &c., at the beginning of the controversy, nor in the historical accounts of it, A.D. 319-341. It is apparently mentioned by Athanasius, Adelph. 1, (with the words, [nun de kat’ oligon hupokatabainontes],) and Apoll. i. 15, A.D. 371-2. And later still by Gregory Naz. 1 Ep. ad Cledon. t. 2, p. 87, by Theod. hær. iv. 1, and August. haer. 55. King (Creed, p. 230) considers it as only partially received among the Arians. It was received, as we find from Theod. supr. and Eranist. ii. pp. 73, 80, by the Eunomians, the extreme party among them, A.D. 357. The Benedictine Editor of St. Hilary, Præf. n. 119, also says, “Neque hic error erat omnium qui Ario favebant communis, sed insignium quorundam Arianorum proprius.” He mentions Potamius (vid. Phœbad. contr. Arian. p. 251); also, Ursacius and Valens (Theod. Hist. ii. 8); and, referring, but not assenting, to Baronius (Ann. 324, n. 100), Eusebius. Theodoret (supr.), and Leontius (de Sectis, iii. 4, p. 365), say, that the Arians adopted the tenet to baffle the Catholics, who are accustomed to explain texts indicative of infirmity in our Lord, by referring such to His human nature. However, it was but the natural or necessary result of their original heresy, and of their dislike of mystery in religion. If the Word was not God, why should He not act as, and instead of, the soul of a man?
The Arians were not the only forerunners of Apollinaris. Origen (de Princ. ii. 5) seems to refer to other such, and Hippolytus (contr. Noët. 17) when, after speaking of our Lord’s soul, he adds, [logiken de lego].]
3. Again, it must be recollected, that the heresies concerning the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, even though on paper they look contrary to each other, do in fact, when analyzed, run together into one. For they are all opposed to the one Truth, and are thereby a negation of those ultimate principles of thought, on which that Truth rests; and thus really, one and all are ranged on one line over against the Truth alone, which seems at first sight to lie between them.
[Thus Arianism and Sabellianism, though diametrically opposed to each other in a drawn-out scheme of doctrine, substantially agree together, and are contrary to the Catholic Faith, inasmuch as the True Faith asserts or admits the existence of mysteries in any human view of the Divine Nature, and both heresies virtually deny it. Again, the Platonic doctrine of the Logos [endiathetos] and [prophorikos], the Word conceived in the mind and the Word spoken, a Divine attribute and a Divine energy, leads either to Sabellianism or to Arianism;—to Sabellianism, since the Divine Word, Endiathetic, is not a Person; to Arianism, since the Personal Word, Prophoric, is not strictly Divine. And again, Arians, Sabellians, Nestorians, and Monophysites, agree together in the assumption on starting, that nature and person are always coincident in intellectual beings; vid. Damasc. contr. Jacob. ii. t. 1, p. 398; Leont. in Nestor. i. p. 660; Vigil. Thaps. contr. Eutych. ii. 10, p. 727; Anast. Hodeg. fin. ii. p. 70, vi. pp. 96, 98, ix. p. 140, xvii. p. 308.]
4. And thus, over and above any direct and avowed identity of doctrine between Apollinarianism and Arianism, there are, as it were, underground communications between the one and the other. For instance, as we shall see presently, inasmuch as Apollinarianism tends to the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Divine Son with His assumed flesh, so does it necessarily favour the Arian denial of His consubstantiality with the Father.