THE AGES DIGITAL LIBRARY REFERENCE CYCLOPEDIA of BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL and ECCLESIASTICAL LITERATURE Apollinarians- Archite by James Strong & John McClintock To the Students of the Words, Works and Ways of God: Welcome to the AGES Digital Library. We trust your experience with this and other volumes in the Library fulfills our motto and vision which is our commitment to you: MAKING THE WORDS OF THE WISE AVAILABLE TO ALL — INEXPENSIVELY. AGES Software Rio, WI USA Version 1.0 © 2000 2 Apollinarians followers of Apollinaris, or Apollinarius (q.v.). Apollinaris or Apollinarius, Claudius bishop of Hieropolis in Phrygia, in the second century an apologist (q.v.) of Christianity, and an opponent of Montanism (q.v.). He was well acquainted with the classic literature of the Greeks, and a prolific writer; but his works, which are mentioned by Eusebius and Photius, are lost; only two fragments of his work on the Passover are extant. — Euseb. Hist. Eccles. 4, 27; Fabricius, Biblioth. Graeca. 7, 160; Tillemont, Memoires, t. 1, pt. 2. Apollinaris or Apollinarius bishop of Laodicea, the son of Apollinaris the elder, who taught first at Berytus, in Phoenicia, and afterward at Laodicea, where he became a presbyter and married. Both father and son were on terms of intimacy with Epiphanius and Libanius, the Sophists. The bishop of Laodicea, Theodotus, having warned them to renounce this friendship, they were excommunicated, but afterward, upon expressing penitence, they were restored. Julian the Apostate forbade the Christians to read the works of any heathen author, upon which the two Apollinarii (father and son) composed many works in imitation of the style of Homer and other ancient Greek works. Among others, they turned the books of Moses into heroic verse; indeed, Sozomen (Hist. Eccles. 5,18) says, the whole of the Old Testament as far as the account of Saul; they also composed dramatic pieces on scriptural subjects, after the style of Menander (Socrat. Hist. Eccl. 3, 16). The younger Apollinaris is mentioned (in Athanas. Ep. ad Antiochenos, tom. 1; Opp. ed. Montfaucon, 2:776) as orthodox bishop of Laodicea A.D. 362, while Pelagius was bishop of the Arians in that city. He was esteemed by Athanasius, Basil, and other great men of that age, who continued to speak respectfully of his merits even after he was suspected of heresy. Apollinaris distinguished himself especially by polemical and exeg tical writings; for instance, by his work on Truth, against the Emperor Julian. He also wrote thirty books against Porphyry, against the Manichaeans, Arians, Marcellus, and others. Jerome himself, during his residence at Antioch, A.D. 373 and 374, enjoyed the instructions of Apollinaris, then bishop of Laodicea. The interpretations of Apollinaris, quoted in the commentaries of Jerome, were peculiarly valuable in those days on account of his knowledge of the Hebrew tongue, Basil mentions a 3 work of Apollinaris on the Holy Ghost. In the year 1552 was published at Paris a Metaphrasis Psalmorum of Apollinaris, and re-edited by Sylburg at Heidelberg in 1596; this, and a tragedy on “Christ suffering,” in the works of Gregory of Nazianzus, were ascribed to Apollinaris; but it is difficult to say what share in these works belongs to the father, and what to the son. Late in life, Apollinaris, who had strenuously defended the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity in his youth, himself incurred the reproach of heresy because he taught that the divine Logos occupied in the person of Christ the place of the human rational soul. “The greatest difficulty in the doctrine of the Trinity appeared to him to consist in the union of the divine person of the Logos with a perfect human person. Two perfect wholes could not be united in one whole (Gregory, Antirrh. cap. 39, p. 323: eij ajnqrw>pw|telei>w|sunhfqh qeo<v te>leiov du>o ¨n ^hsan). Setting out from Anthropology, he asserted that the essence of the rational soul consists in its self-determination. If this characteristic were retained in connection with the divine nature, there could be no true personal union, but only such a divine influence on Jesus as might be experienced by any other man. On the other hand, if the soul forfeited this characteristic, it would renounce its essential peculiarity (Ibid. p. 245: fqora< tou~ aujtexousi>ou zw>ou to< mh< ei`>nai aujtexou>sion: ouj fqei>retai de< hJ fu>siv uJpo< tou~ poih>santov aujth>n). On the first point he objected to the school of Origen, that it admitted no true union of the divine and the human, but made instead two Sons of God, the Logos and the man Jesus (L. c. xlii: ei`>v me<n fu>sei uiJo<v qeou~, ei`>v de< qeto>v). Hence he thought the rational human soul must be excluded from the God-man, and, in this, the old undefined doctrine was on his side. For the human soul he substituted the Logos himself as the nou~v qei~ov. He developed this doctrine with originality and acuteness. The scheme of human nature which he made use of was the common trichotomical one, of the yuch< logikh> (noera>), a]logov, and the sw~ma. That an animal principle of life, a yuch< a]logov, must be admitted to exist in human nature, he thought might be proved from Paul’s Epistles, in the passages where he speaks of the flesh lusting against the Spirit; for the body in itself has no power of lusting, but only the soul that is connected with it. It is not self-determining, but must be determined by the yuch< logikh>, which with it ought to govern the body. But this result is frustrated by sin, and, conquered by it, the reason succumbs to the power of the irrational desires. In order to free man from sin, the unchangeable Divine Spirit must be 4 united with a human nature, control the anima, and present a holy human life (contra Apollinarist. t. 1, cap. 13, p. 736). Thus we have in Christ, as man, the three component parts, and can call him the a]nqrwpov ejpoura>niov, only with this difference, the Divine occupies the place of the human nouv’’(Neander, Hist. of Doctrines, 1, 320). Athanasius wrote against Apollinarism, though not against Apollinaris personally (Epist. ad Epict.; contra Apollinaristas); Gregory of Nazianzus wrote against him also (Ep. I, 2, ad Cledonium; ad Nectarium); and Gregory of Nyssa his AjntirjrJhtiko>v(in Galland. Bibl. Patr. 6, 517). His heresy became generally known A.D. 371. The accusations of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret against the character of Apollinaris are not plausible. “Of the writings in which he explained his views, only fragments are extant in the works of Gregory of Nyssa, Theodoret, and Leontius Byzantinus (who lived about the year 590); they were the following: peri< sarkw>sewv logi>dion (ajpo>deixiv peri< th~v qei>av e>nsarkw>sewv)- to< kata< kefa>laion bibli>on — peri> aJnasta>sewv — peri< pi>stewv logi>dion — and some letters (in Gallandii Bibl. PP. 12, 706 sq.; Angelo Mtai Class. auct. 9, 495 sq.). Apollinaris objected to the union of the Logos with a rational soul; that the human being thus united to the Logos must either preserve his own free will, in which case there would be no true union of the Divine and the human, or that the human soul had lost its proper liberty by becoming united to the Logos, either of which would be absurd. ‘He chiefly opposed the trepto>n, or the liberty of choice in christology’ (Dorner, Person of Christ, per. 1, ep. 3, ch. 3). In his opinion, Christ is not only a]nqrwpov e]nqeov, but the incarnate God. According to the threefold division of man, Apollinaris was willing to ascribe a soul to the Redeemer in so far as he thought it to be a mean between body and spirit. But that which itself determines the soul (to< aujtoki>nhton), and constitutes the higher dignity of man, the nou~v (the yuch< logikh>) of Christ, could not be of human origin, but must be purely divine; for his incarnation did not consist in the Logos becoming nou~v, but in becoming sa>rx. But the Divine reason supplying the place of the human, there exists a specific difference between Christ and other beings. In their case, every thing had to undergo a process of gradual development, which cannot be brought about without either conflicts or sin (o[pou ga<r te>leiov a]nqrwpov, ejkei~ kai< aJmarti>a, apud. Athan. 1:2, p. 923; compare c. 21, p. 939: aJmarti>a ejnupo>sta~|tov). But this could not take place in the case of Christ: oujdemi>a a]skhsiv ejn Cristw~|: oujk a]ra nou~v ejstin ajnqrw>pinov (comp. Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrhet. adv. Apollin. 4, c. 221). At the same 5 time, Apollinaris supposed the body and soul of Christ to be so completely filled with the higher and divine principle of spiritual life, that he did not hesitate to use expressions such as ‘God died, God is born,’ etc. He even maintained that, on account of this intimate union, Divine homage is also due to the human nature of Christ (1. c. p. 241, 264). His opponents, therefore, charged him with Patripassianism. But we do not think that Apollinaris ever asserted, as Gregory of Nazianzus would have us believe, that Christ must have possessed an irrational, animal soul, e.g. that of a horse or an ox, because he had not a rational human soul: Gregory himself seems to have drawn such inferences from the premises of Apollinaris.