s a whole, or in
respect of its parts. Consubstantiality with humanity may be denied of
the whole of his human nature; or deficiency in one or other of the
essential constituents of human nature may be alleged. We shall deal
first with those errors that concern the entire nature, coming later to
the errors in respect of one or more of its several parts.

Suspicion of the reality of Christ's human nature as a whole is
characteristic of all monophysite thought. This suspicion, not always
formulated or expressed, is everywhere present. If the monophysites
admitted the fact of His true manhood, they denied or neglected the
religious value of that fact. Their spurious spirituality rebelled
against a dogma which seemed to tie the infinite down to a point in
history. The fact that the Son of God lived a perfect human life
contained no inspiration for them. They idealised the incarnation. It
was not for them a historical event. This is a corollary to the
proposition, maintained by their great champion, Philoxenus, that "no
addition to His person took place." It is tantamount to saying that
the union of divine and human in Christ is purely conceptual. When the
monophysite faced the question, "What change in Christ did the
incarnation effect?" his formula constrained him to reply, "It made no
change." The deity of the person was not denied. The pre-existent
Logos and the Christ who walked in Galilee were admittedly one and the
same. The second person of the trinity and Jesus of Nazareth were one
personality. If Bethlehem made no change in that personality, it was
purposeless, and the import of the incarnation disappears.

THE MONOPHYSITE THEORY OF A COMPOSITION OF NATURES

For the consistent monophysites, then, the human nature, as a psychic
entity with peculiar properties, did not survive the incarnation. They
did, however, allow it a verbal reality. They admitted a composition
of natures, and this composition provided for them whatever degree of
reality the incarnation possessed. On this point their Christology
passed through several stages of development, the later stages showing
progressive improvement on the earlier. They distinguished three
senses of the word "composition." First, they said, it might mean
"absorption," as when a drop of water is absorbed in a jar of wine.
Second, it might imply the transmutation of constituent particles, as
when a third unlike thing is formed from two. Thirdly, th