difficulty of the problem. It must be remembered[1] that the great crux of specifically Christian theology, "How can Christ be at once God and Man?" was approached in the East from Antioch to Seleucia by minds steeped for generations in the dualistic conceptions that lie at the base of all oriental philosophy—conceptions which postulate the evil of matter, and the existence of an impassable gulf between Creator and creature.
Doctrines of this kind are called Manichæan, principally because disciples of Manes did much to popularize them in the West, but Manes did not create or give currency to the conceptions; he merely based his system upon them.
Minds bred in a "Manichæan" medium shrank inevitably from the conception of a real Incarnation of the Word, resulting in a true "God-Man"; and they explained away the difficulty in various ways. Some declared, with the Gnostics, that the nature assumed must have been a phantom merely; others adopted one of two explanations superficially opposite but essentially the same, the concave and convex sides of the curve. They either declared the Incarnation to be a mere association of a man with the Divinity, which is Nestorianism; or that the manhood was annihilated by assumption into the Divinity, which is Monophysitism. In either case, belief in the absolute incompatibility of the human and the Divine lies at the root of the conception. Neither the "Nestorian" nor the "Monophysite" Christ (if the language they used be pressed) is a true Mediator, for a Mediator is impossible. The persistence of this inadequate conception may be judged from the fact that it also underlies Mahommedan theology.
- ↑ For the thought expressed in this paragraph, the writer must express his indebtedness of a friend, the Rev. O. H. Parry.
