eption was to
identify Christ with God in order that by his incarnation the divine
nature might be brought into union with humanity and the latter be
transformed. In this case too a combination was effected, the idea of
Christ as the incarnation of the Logos or Son of God being retained and
yet his deity being preserved by the assertion of the deity of the
Logos. The recognition of Christ as the incarnation of the Logos was
practically universal before the close of the 3rd century, but his deity
was still widely denied, and the Arian controversy which distracted the
Church of the 4th century concerned the latter question. At the council
of Nicaea in 325 the deity of Christ received official sanction and was
given formulation in the original Nicene Creed. Controversy continued
for some time, but finally the Nicene decision was recognized both in
East and West as the only orthodox faith. The deity of the Son was
believed to carry with it that of the Spirit, who was associated with
Father and Son in the baptismal formula and in the current symbols, and
so the victory of the Nicene Christology meant the recognition of the
doctrine of the Trinity as a part of the orthodox faith (see especially
the writings of the Cappadocian fathers of the late 4th century, Gregory
of Nyssa, Basil and Gregory Nazianzen).

The assertion of the deity of the Son incarnate in Christ raised another
problem which constituted the subject of dispute in the Christological
controversies of the 4th and following centuries. What is the relation
of the divine and human natures in Christ? At the council of Chalcedon
in 451 it was declared that in the person of Christ are united two
complete natures, divine and human, which retain after the union all
their properties unchanged. This was supplemented at the third council
of Constantinople in 680 by the statement that each of the natures
contains a will, so that Christ possesses two wills. The Western Church
accepted the decisions of Nicaea, Chalcedon and Constantinople, and so
the doctrines of the Trinity and of the two natures in Christ were
handed down as orthodox dogma in West as well as East.

Meanwhile in the Western Church the subject of sin and grace, and the
relation of divine and human activity in salvation, received especial
attention; and finally, at the second council of Orange in 529, after
both Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism had been repudiated, a moderate
form of Augustinianism was adopted