nce.
The relation between God and man ever remains impersonal. Christ,
_qua_ divine, was only an aspect or effluence of deity. This, for the
monophysite, was the one alternative to the doctrine of a passible God.
He was faced with a desperate dilemma. If he retained his belief in a
transcendent God, he must surrender belief in a triune God. He could
choose between the two; but his Christology permitted no third choice.
For him, the only alternative to a finite God was a lone God. As a
result monophysite theology oscillated between denial of the
impassibility of God and denial of his three-fold personality. In
either case the orthodox doctrine of the godhead was abandoned.

One of the stock questions propounded by the catholics to the
monophysites was, "Was the trinity incomplete when the Son of God was
on earth?" The question is crudely expressed, as it ignores the type
of existence proper to spiritual personality; but it contains a
sufficiently sound _ad hominem_ argument. The monophysite could not
say "yes," or he would then be driven to assert a passible God. If he
said "no," his reply was tantamount to the assertion that the whole
essence of the Godhead was incarnate. The logic of this dilemma was so
cogent that not a few monophysites succumbed to it, and adopted a
position similar to that of the earlier Patripassianists. These
seceded from the monophysite church, and founded an independent sect,
called the Theopaschites. As often happens, the sect is, doctrinally,
more representative than the parent body. The Theopaschites were the
thinkers who had the courage to push the monophysite doctrines to their
logical conclusions. Those who did not secede, unable to defend their
own doctrinal position, retaliated with the counter-charge of
tetratheism. This stroke was simply a confession of weakness. Monism
was strangling their Christianity at every turn. Instead of breaking
free from it, they pretended that their opponents were polytheists.
The catholic, however, was neither monist nor pluralist. The
incarnation was not the addition of a fourth divine being to the
trinity. The essence of the godhead remained complete, unchanged and
impassible; while the hypostatic union of God and man in Christ made
possible the assumption of a passible nature by the person of the Son
of God.

MONOPHYSITISM AND ISLAM--SABELLIANISM THE CONNECTING LINK

It is in place here to point out the somewhat intimate connect