The flesh will live agreeably to the soul, if the soul lives the same idea. "Mortality," he says, "is not the cause of sin accuse it not: but the wicked will is the root of all the mischief. For why was not Abel at all the worse for his body? Why are the devils not at all the better for being incorporeal?" (Hom. in 1 Cor., XVII. Compare Hom. in Epist. ad Rom., XI.; Comm. in Epist. ad Gal., V. 12, 17.) Viewed from the standpoint of our relations to God, sin, according to Augustine, consists pre-eminently in pride or selfishness. "What," he asks, "is the origin of our evil will but pride? And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself." (De Civ. Dei, XIV. 13.) CHAPTER IV. REDEEMER AND REDEMPTION. SECTION I.THE PERSON OF CHRIST. DURING the earlier stages of the Arian controversy, very little attention was given to the subject of Christology. Catholic writers stopped short with the general assumption that Christ is both God and man, neither specifying the exact sense in which He might be called man, nor discussing the mode of harmonizing a plurality of natures with personal unity. But the Arian agitation itself finally served as an occasion of a specific consideration of Christology. While the stimulus may have come more immediately from Apollinaris, it was from Arianism that he received a principal incentive to the development and advocacy of his theory. Arianism denied to the Redeemer a rational human soul, and charged the Catholic party with a substitution of two persons for the single Christ. Apollinaris of Laodicea, an ardent supporter of the Nicene faith, seems to have recognized a certain validity in the objection. He considered that it greatly simplified the view of the Redeemer's person to assume that, in incarnating Himself, He took simply the body with its life principle, or animal soul, the place of the rational soul being supplied by the Logos. This view, he argued, corresponds very exactly to the scriptural declaration that the Word became flesh. It is also specially commended by the fact that it removes from Christ's person the obnoxious factor of a human will, which in its nature is mutable. To unite the Divine Son simply with the impersonal factors flesh and animal soul, is the most perfect offset to the Arian doctrine of a mutable Christ, and is also essential to the Saviour's perfection, since He alone is a perfect Saviour who stands above the liability to fall into sin. The doings and the sufferings of Christ appear clothed with a virtue adequate to their redemptive purpose only when they are associated directly with a divine subject. Moreover, without the human soul, Christ is a sufficient representative of humanity. He has the same three factors in His person which every man has, namely, spirit, soul, and body. While Christ as Logos or spirit is eternal and unchangeable and infinite, He is still, as spirit, in kinship with man, being the archetype of universal humanity, and destined from eternity to bear the human form. The view of Apollinaris, notwithstanding the respect in which he had been held by the Nicene fathers, called forth their decided opposition. They regarded it as increasing the difficulty of scriptural exegesis by removing the factor with which Christ's exhibition of human traits might be associated, and as every way antagonistic to the saving office of Christ, since it neither brought the more essential part of human nature into union with the divine, nor made it possible to consider Christ a real example for men. Apollinaris, therefore, was formally censured, first by local synods, and then by the ecumenical council of Constantinople in 381. His Christology, viewed in its totality, was no doubt alien to the central current of thought in the Church. Still, a leading design of his, namely, to represent Christ's human nature as impersonal, was in harmony with the teachings which representative writers in the Church ultimately sanctioned. The Greek fathers of the Arian era, who opposed Apollinaris, being chiefly interested in the divinity of Christ, greatly subordinated the human to the divine aspect. While they insisted upon the complete humanity of Christ, they still regarded this as overshadowed by the associated divinity. By this order of representation, they thought to secure the unity of the Redecmer's person. "The teachers of this period," says Dorner, "thought it possible to avoid all dissonance, and to secure the unity by assigning to the divine aspect overpowering and sole-dominating power." This bent is especially noticeable in Gregory of Nyssa. As a drop of vinegar, he says, when cast into the sea, is transformed and becomes a part of the sea-water, so the flesh of Christ was transformed, and lost all its natural properties by union with the divine infinitude. (Antirrhet. adv. Apol., XLII.) Early Catholic Christology, in the Latin Church, was distinguished in general by considerable stress upon the human aspect. We find Hilary, however, the most eminent in christological respects among the Latin writers of the Arian era, assigning to the divine a marked predominance over the human. While he assumes a gradual development of the finite nature in Christ, he makes this not so much a free development of the human factor as the product of the shaping and controlling energy of the divine, which by this means prepares for a complete union of the two. He gives utterance also to the idea advanced by Clement of Alexandria; namely, that Christ was not by nature subjected to bodily necessities, and ate and drank merely to show the reality of his body. (De Trin., X. 24.) The more distinct recognition, in this period, of the human nature of Christ came from the Antiochian school. This was the school of biblical criticism. It studied the Bible in accordance with the maxims of a sober exegesis. Such study naturally drew attention to the wide contrasts which may be found among the attributes which the New Testament associates with Christ. At the same time much stress was laid upon freedom as a condition of moral excellence. Hence it came about that this school distinguished broadly between the divine and the human in Christ,-be tween Christ as Son of God and Christ as Son of Man,and regarded the latter as developing much in the same free way as men in general. Theodore of Mopsuestia, in whom the tendencies of the school came to their boldest and most definite expression, undoubtedly did not fall far short of predicating simply a (peculiarly intimate) moral union between Christ as man and Christ as God, a permanent association rather than a complete union of the two. On the other hand, the Alexandrian school continued in the spirit of the Nicene fathers, who greatly subordinated the human to the divine. Instead of dwelling upon the distinction of the natures, they emphasized their unity. In pursuance of a mystical bent, they were disposed to regard the human as in some inexplicable way fused into oneness with the divine. These two schools first came to a positive collision in the persons of Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, and Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. Personal jealousies and ambitions had much to do with instigating and carrying forward the strife; but real doctrinal differences were involved. Perhaps neither the one nor the other was disposed to advocate, with a clear understanding of his own position, what might be called an heretical extreme; but each tended more or less toward such an extreme,—the one to the heresy of compromising Christ's personal unity, the other to the heresy of denying two natures in Him. χριστοτόκος, The immediate occasion of the outbreak was the declaration of Nestorius that OeOтókos is not an appropriate term to apply to the Virgin, and that she ought rather to be called XPLOTOTÓKOS,—that is, mother or bearer of Christ, instead of mother of God. The term which he rejected had become quite well naturalized in the Church, and to challenge it seemed to the opponents of Nestorius a plain indication of a disposition to separate unduly the two natures in Christ, and indeed really to divide the one Redeemer into two persons. A crusade was accordingly begun against |