ecomes unreal, illusory, impotent.

An offshoot of docetism that flourished among the monophysites is the
aphthartodocetic heresy. This is of considerable historical
importance. Large numbers of the Syrian and Egyptian monophysites
embraced it, and seceded from the parent church. It became part of the
official creed of Armenian Christianity, and that church has not
repudiated it to this day. There are good, though hardly conclusive,
grounds for holding that the emperor Justinian, profound theologian and
life-long champion of orthodoxy, was converted to the heretical theory
in the last few months of his life.[4] Aphthartodocetism, affirming
the reality of Christ's body, denies that it was subject to the wear
and tear of life. The body, as this heresy taught, was superior to
natural process; it was neither corrupted nor corruptible. The term
"corruptibility" has the wide significance of organic process, that is
the lot of all created living things. A milder form of the heresy
asserted that Christ's body was corruptible but was not corrupted.
Aphthartodocetism springs from a spurious spirituality, from a
fastidiousness that has no place in true religion. It is symptomatic
of Manicheanism, which associates matter with sin. Christians affirm
sinlessness of Christ's humanity; they do not affirm immateriality of
His body. The monophysites, in abandoning the true Christology, were
predisposed to the infection of this heresy. A being in whom organic
process was present seemed to these heretics no fit object of worship.
They called the orthodox Ctistolatrae or Phthartolatrae, worshippers of
the created or corruptible.

Monophysites of all shades of opinion united in condemning the practice
of worshipping Christ's human nature. That practice was in their eyes
both idle and injurious; idle, because the human nature did not exist
as a separate entity; injurious, because it fixed the mind of the
worshipper on the finite. In consequence they were much opposed to all
observances based on a belief in His humanity. Images or other
representations of Him in human form seemed to them idolatrous. The
monophysite church was not directly concerned in the iconoclastic
controversy, but their doctrines were indirectly responsible for it.
In fact the great monophysites, Severus and Philoxenus, have been
styled "the fathers of the iconoclasts."

MONOPHYSITISM BLIND TO THE DUAL CHARACTER OF CHRIST'S EXPERIENCE

Such were the