ure
that suffered on the Cross be not distinct from the nature that cannot
suffer, then the Crucifixion was a sham. Monophysitism is docetism
elaborated. It abandons the Christ of history. It rules out His
_prokope_. It ignores a fact, vital to Christology, namely the
_kenosis_ or divine self-limitation. Thus it throws a veil of
unreality over those facts on which the Christian Faith is built.

MONOPHYSITISM A PRODUCT OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE CURRENTS OF RELIGIOUS
THOUGHT

The foregoing sketch of the early Christological heresies exhibits
monophysitism as a product of two opposite intellectual currents. A
man's convictions are settled for him partly by acceptance, partly by
rejection of what tradition offers or his mind evolves. The mass mind
works similarly. It accepts and rejects, approves and disallows. The
stabilisation of a body of mass opinions, such as a heresy, is thus
determined by opposite forces. It was so with monophysitism. Its
Christian antecedents comprised positive and negative currents. The
positive current was docetism, the negative ebionitism. Docetism,
originating in apostolic times, passed through many phases, to provide,
at the end of the fourth century, in its most refined form,
Apollinarianism, the immediate positive cause of monophysitism.
Ebionitism, related to docetism as realism to idealism, possessed equal
vitality and equal adaptability. It showed itself in various
humanistic interpretations of Christ. Of these the most elaborate was
Nestorianism, which exerted the most insistent and immediate negative
influence on the early growth of monophysitism.

MONOPHYSITISM AND NON-CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

We leave here the subject of the influence of other heresies on
monophysitism, and proceed to exhibit its affinities with non-Christian
thought. At Alexandria, the home of the heresy, two systems of
philosophy, the Aristotelian and the Neo-Platonist, were strongly
represented. Both of these philosophies exercised a profound influence
upon the origins and upon the later developments of monophysite
doctrine. We propose to take, first, the Aristotelian, and then the
Neo-Platonist philosophy, elucidating those leading ideas in each on
which the monophysite thinker would naturally fasten, as lending
intellectual support to his religious views.

THE ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC

Aristotle was held in high estimation by the monophysite leaders,
particularly in the sixth and seventh c