Adolf Harnack · 15 of 19

Chapter IV. The Mysteries and Kindred Subjects. · Part 1

C. THE ENJOYMENT OF REDEMPTION IN THE PRESENT.

There is an old story of a man who was in a condition of ignorance, dirt, and wretchedness and who was one day told by God that he might wish for anything he liked and that his wish would be granted. And he began to wish for more and more and to get higher and higher, and he got all he wanted. At last he got presumptuous and wished he might become like God Himself, when at once he was back again in his dirt and wretchedness. The history of religion is such a story; but it is in the history of the religion of the Greeks and the Easterns that it came true in the strictest sense. They first wished to have material goods by means of religion, then political, æsthetic, moral, and intellectual goods, and they got everything. They became Christians and desired perfect knowledge and a supra-moral life. Finally they wished even in this world to be as God in knowledge, bliss, and life, and then they fell down, not all at once, but with a fall that could not be stopped, to the lowest stage in ignorance, dirt, and barbarity. Any one who at the present day studies the condition of Greek religion amongst the orthodox and the Monophysites, and not merely the religion of the untrained masses, but also the ritual of worship and the magical ceremonies practised by the ordinary priests and monks and their ideas of things, will with regard to many points get the impression that religion could hardly fall lower. It has really become “superstitio”, a chaos of mixed and entirely diverse but at the same time rigidly fixed maxims and formula;, an unintelligible and long-winded ritual of a patchwork kind, which is held in high esteem, because it binds the nation or the tribe together or unites it to the past, but which is still a really living ritual only in its most inferior parts. If we were to imagine that we knew nothing, absolutely nothing, of Christianity in its original form and of its history in the first six centuries, and had to determine the genesis, the earlier stages, and the value of the original religion from a consideration of the present condition, say, of the Jacobite or of the Ethiopian Church, how utterly impossible this would be. What we have here is a forbidding and well-nigh dead figure of which only some members and these not the principal members are still living, whose nobler parts are so crusted over that so far as their essence is concerned they defy any historical explanation. Islam which swept violently over Christianity in this form was a real deliverer; for spite of its defects and barrenness it was a more spiritual power than the Christian religion which in the East had well-nigh become a religion of the amulet, the fetish, and conjurers, above which floats the dogmatic spectre, Jesus Christ.

Many factors contributed to this final result, and above all, the stern march of political history and the economic distress. Closely connected with this was the abolition of the old distinctions between aristocrats, freemen, and slaves, and following upon this the penetration into the higher ranks of the religious and intellectual barbarism which had never been overcome in the lower ranks. Christianity itself contributed in the most effective fashion towards the decomposition of society; but having done this, it was not able to elevate the masses and to build up a Christian Society in the most moderate sense of the word, on the contrary it made one concession after another to the requirements and wishes of the masses. The fact, however, that it thus soon became weak and allowed the “Christian religion of the second order” which originally had been merely tolerated, to exercise an ever increasing influence on the official religion, is to be explained from the attitude which the latter itself had more and more come to take up.

The general idea of redemption which prevailed in the Greek Church had an eschatological character; redemption is deliverance from perishableness and death. But in Vol. III., pp. 163-190, attention was drawn to the fact that at all periods of its history the Greek Church was aware of possessing a means of salvation which already exists in the present and had its origin in the same source from which future redemption flows—namely, the incarnate person of Jesus Christ. The conception of this present means of salvation was originally of a spiritual kind; the knowledge of God and of the world, the perfect knowledge of the conditions attached to the future enjoyment of salvation, and the power of doing good works, in short “teaching of dogmas and good works” (μάθημα τῶν δογμάτων καὶ πράξεις ἀγαθαί) (Cyril of Jerus.), and in addition power over the demons (Athanasius). True, however, to the general mode of conceiving things and also to the heathen philosophies of religion of that period, this knowledge in reference to divine things soon came to be regarded not as in its nature a clear knowledge, or as having an historical origin, or as in its working something to be spiritually apprehended, but on the contrary as a sophia or wisdom, which being only half comprehensible and mysterious, originates directly with God and is communicated by sacred initiation. The uncertainty which in consequence seemed to attach to the content of this knowledge was more than counter-balanced by the consciousness that the knowledge so acquired and communicated, establishes a fellowship amongst those possessed of it and leads to real union with God and is thus not merely individual reflection.

This magical-mystical element which attaches to knowledge as the present possession of salvation, is certainly also to be considered as a clumsy expression of the view that the summum bonum is higher than all reason. But the truth which the Eastern Christians wished to grasp and to retain, was not securely established by mystical rationalism. The combination, however, of the natural theology which had never been given up with mysticism, with the magical and sacramental, entailed above all this serious loss that less and less attention was given to the positive moral element, while the downfall of pure science made it possible for the theologians to take up with all sorts of superstition. It was not that the superstitio of the masses was simply forced upon them; in their own theology they endeavoured in ever increasing measure to reach a transcendental knowledge which could be enjoyed, as it were, in a sensuous way. Like their blood-relations the Neo-Platonists, they were originally over-excited, and their minds became dulled, and thus they required a stronger and stronger stimulant. The most refined longing for the enjoyment of faith and knowledge was finally changed into barbarity. They wished to fill themselves with the holy and the divine as one fills oneself with some particular kind of food. In accordance with this the dogma, the μάθησις, was embodied in material forms and changed into a means of enjoyment—the end of this was the magic of mysteries, which swallows up everything, the sacred images, the sacred ritual. Christianity is no longer μάθησις and πράξεις ἀγαθαί, it is μάθησις and μυσταγωγία, or rather for the great majority it was to be only μυσταγωγία. The image-controversy shews us where the supreme interests of the Church are to be looked for.

The development of what belongs to the sphere of mysteries and of cultus from the time of Origen to the ninth century does not form part of the History of Dogma. Together with the conceptions of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, sacraments, and images it constitutes a history by itself, a history which has never yet been written, and which runs parallel with the History of Dogma. In the Greek Church there was no “dogma” of the Lord’s Supper any more than there was a “dogma” of grace. And quite as little was there up to the time of the image-controversy a “dogma” of the saints, angels, and images; it was the θεοτόκος only that was found in the Catechism. But ritual was practised here with all the more certainty. There was a holy ritual; it was already firmly established in the days of Athanasius when the State united with the Church, and it was closely followed by a mystagogic theology. This mystagogic theology starting from a fixed point moved with the greatest freedom in the direction of a definitely recognised goal.

The fixed starting-point it had in common with dogma. It was the idea that Christianity is the religion which has made the Divine comprehensible and offers it to us to be possessed and enjoyed. The definitely recognised goal was the establishment of a system of divine economy of a strictly complete kind as regards time and place, the factors of which it was composed and the means it employed, and which, while existing in the midst of what is earthly, allows the initiated by the help of sensuous media to enjoy the divine life. Those who above all developed this system did so with a certain reservation—it was not absolutely necessary. He who has speculation and ascetic discipline has in these as a personal possession, means which render it unnecessary for him to go in quest of sensuous signs and initiation in common. This was the view of Clemens and Origen, and after them the same opinion was expressed by the most important mystagogues of the earlier period, that is, by all those who created mystagogy; for no one creates anything without having the consciousness of being above his creation. But the Epigoni receive everything which has come to be what it is under the form of authority, and accordingly it becomes more and more impossible for them to distinguish between end and means, actual things and their substitutes, between what occupies a ruling place and what is subordinate. The spiritualism which, partly in self-protection and partly following its craving for fantastic creations and sensuous pictures, creates for itself in the earthly sphere a new world which it fills with its own ideas, is at the last menaced and crushed by its own creations. But then the spirit which has been artificially enclosed in it vanishes too, and there is nothing but a dead, inert remainder. On it accordingly that veneration is ever more and more bestowed which formerly was supposed to belong to the spirit which had been confined within the matter. Herewith polytheism in the full sense of the word is once more established, it matters not what form dogmatics may take. Religion has lost touch with spiritual truth. When for it a definite space is sacred—in the strictest sense of the word,—and in the same way a definite place, definite vehicles, bread, wine, images, crosses, amulets, clothes, when it connects the presence of the Holy with definite persons, vessels, ceremonies, in short with the exact carrying out of a carefully prescribed ritual, then though this ritual may have the form it always had and may even include in it the most sublime and exalted thoughts, it is played out as spiritual religion and has fallen back to a low level. But this was the final fate of the religion of the Greeks, which adorns itself with the name “Christian”. The private religion of thousands of its adherents, measured by the Gospel or the Christianity of Justin may be genuinely Christian,—the religio publica has only the incontestable right to the Christian name,—and in possessing the Holy Scriptures it has what cannot be lost, the capability of reforming itself. Its fundamental dogma, which in the end determined its entire practice, namely, that the God-man Jesus Christ deified the human substance and in accordance with this attached a system of divine forces to earthly media, did not enable it to overcome the old polytheism of the Greeks and barbarians, but on the contrary rendered it incapable of resisting this.

This is not the place to discuss the question as to the extent to which religion succumbed to it and the consequences of this, nor as to the influence exercised by the Neo-Platonic ecclesiastical science and by the ancient religions and mysteries respectively. All we can aim at doing is to establish the fact that the μυσταγωγία which the μάθησις had in view, gradually brought about the decay of the latter. It is only now that we are able perfectly to understand why such a determined resistance was made in the Greek Church to all fresh attempts to give dogma a fixed form, a resistance which could be overcome only by the most strenuous efforts. It was not only the traditionalism native to all religions which thus offered resistance, but the interests bound up with the ritualistic treatment of dogma and to which serious injury was done by the construction of new formulae. If the practical significance of dogma lay not only in the fact that salvation was attained hereafter on the basis of this Faith, but also in the fact that on the basis of this Faith Christians were already initiated in this world,—in worship,—into fellowship with the Godhead and were able to enjoy the divine, it was necessary that the expression of this truth should be raised above all possibility of change. The liturgical formula which is constantly repeated, is what can least of all stand being altered. Accordingly it is only when we consider how dogmatic controversies have necessarily always been controversies about words which demanded admission into the liturgy, as was the case with the foreign Nicene catch-words, the θεοτόκος, the theopaschitian formula etc., and finally the “filioque”, that we can understand the suspicion which they necessarily roused. We can still see in fact from the state of things in our own churches at the present time how such a liturgy or such a book of praise which in no way corresponds to the creed, causes no difficulty, while even the best innovation has a most disturbing effect. The value of the ritual of worship lies always in its antiquity, not in its dogmatic correctness. Thus the μυσταγωγία which rested on the fundamental thoughts of the μάθησις, and which in fact issued from it, was the stoutest opponent of a doctrina publica which was advancing to greater precision of statement. In the end it actually reduced it to silence. In the controversy of Photius with Rome in reference to the Holy Spirit the charge brought against the West of having altered the wording of the Creed was urged quite as strongly as the charge of having tampered with the doctrine. One may in fact say that the Greeks regarded the former as worse than the latter. This is the most telling proof of the fact that the daughter became more powerful than the mother, that the μυσταγωγία had come to occupy a place of central importance. This, however, took place long before the days of Photius. The dogmatic controversies of the seventh century are in truth only a kind of echo of no importance, which merely gave dogma the illusory appearance of an independent life. The nature of the controversy makes it evident to any one who looks at the matter more closely, that the dogma had already become a petrifaction and that the kindred ideas of antiquity and of the stability of worship already dominated everything. It is the age of Justinian which brings the independent dogmatic development to an end. At that time the liturgy too received what was practically its final revision. The final completion of dogma ensued under the guidance of scholasticism which now established itself in the Church. Mystagogic theology, which now first began to spread widely, followed the completed liturgy. In this connection we may mention Leontius on the one side and Maximus Confessor who belonged to the seventh century on the other. Dogma as treated in the scholastic and ritualistic fashion is no longer μάθησις at all, in the strict sense of the word. It is, like the Eucharist or the “authentic” image, a divine marvel, a paradoxical, sacred datum, which scholasticism labours to elevate to being μάθησις, and which mysteriosophy exhibits in worship as something to be enjoyed.

We might content ourselves with these hints regarding the fate of dogma. It will, however, be proper to select two subjects from the rich and complicated material of the history of worship and the mysteries and by means of them to give a somewhat more precise outline of the course of development. These are the ideas of the Lord’s Supper in connection with which we have to pay attention to the mysteries in general, and the worship of angels, saints, the Virgin Mary, martyrs, relics, and images. As regards the latter, the action ensued in the eighth and ninth centuries which brings to an end the history of dogma or the history of religion in the Eastern Church generally. From this date onwards it has had merely an outward history, a history of theology, of mysticism, and ritualism.

§ I.

At the beginning of the Fourth Century the Church already possessed a large series of “mysteries” whose number and limits were, however, not in any way certainly defined. They are τελεταί, mystic rites, which are based on λόγια τοῦ Θεοῦ, words of God; amongst these Baptism, together with the practice of anointing which was closely connected with it, and the Lord’s Supper, were the most highly esteemed; while from them a part of the other mysteries had also been developed. Symbolic acts, originally intended to accompany these mysteries, got detached and became independent. It was in this way that Confirmation originated which is already reckoned by Cyprian as a special “Sacramentum”, which Augustine designates a “Sacramentum Chrismatis”, and which is called by the Areopagite a “mystery of the mystic oil” (μυστήριον τελετῆς μύρου). Augustine too knows of a “Sacramentum Salis” as well as many others, and the Areopagite makes special mention of six mysteries: of enlightenment (φωτίσματος), of coming together or communion (συνάξεως εἴτ᾽ οὖν κοινωνίας), of the mystic oil (τελετῆς μύρου), of priestly consecrations (ἱερατικῶν τελειώσεων), of monastic consecration (μοναχικῆς τελειώσεως), and the mysteries in reference to the holy dead (μυστήρια ἐπὶ τῶν ἱερῶς κακοιμημένων). This enumeration is not, however, in any way typical, and its author can hardly have intended it to be taken as absolutely complete. “Mysterium” is every symbol, any material thing, in connection with which anything sacred is to be thought of, every action done in the Church, every priestly performance. These mysteries correspond to the heavenly mysteries which have their source in the Trinity and in the Incarnation. As every fact of revelation is a mysterium in so far as the divine has through it entered into the sphere of the material, so conversely every material medium, and thus too the word or the action, is a mysterium as soon as the material is a symbol or vehicle of the divine. But even in the earliest times no strict distinction was made between symbol and vehicle. The development consists in this that the symbol more and more retreated behind the vehicle, that new heathen symbols and ritual actions were adopted in increasing numbers and that finally the vehicle was no longer conceived of as a covering for or outward embodiment of a truth, but as a deified element, as something essentially divine.

It is obvious that this way of regarding the “mysteries”, amongst which the sign of the cross, relics, exorcism, marriage, etc., were reckoned, made it impossible to think of them as having a marked and lofty dogmatic efficacy. The rigid dogmatic even forbade such an assumption. As Greek theology regards the Church as an institute for salvation only when it is thinking of heathen and lapsed members or members who are minors, because the doctrine of freedom and redemption does not allow of the thought of a saving institute or of a community of believers chosen by God, in the same way and for the same reasons it knows nothing of a means of grace for those who are already believers, so far as by this is meant the sin-destroying, reconciliatory activity of God attached to a material sign and always strictly limited in its range, and which has for its object the re-establishment of justice and charity or of the filial relation. The ancient Church knew nothing of such means of grace. Accordingly since it desired to have mysteries, believed it possessed them in actions which had been handed down, and was strongly influenced by the dying heathen cultus, it had to content itself with the inexpressibleness of the effect of the mysteries. This conception forms the basis even where, following the directions of the New Testament, regeneration, the forgiveness of sins, the bestowal of the spirit, etc., are deduced in rhetorical language from separate sacraments. The assumption that the sacramental actions had certain inexpressible effects—the doctrine of freedom prevented the magical-mystical effects which were specially included under this head from being embodied in a dogmatic theory—logically led, however, to these being performed in such a way that the imagination was excited and the heavenly was seen heard, smelt, and felt, as for example in incense and the relics and bones of martyrs. The enjoyment of salvation on the part of him who participated in these rites, was supposed to consist in the elevating impression made on the imagination and the sensuous feelings. He was supposed to feel himself lifted up by means of it into the higher world, and in this feeling to taste the glory of the super-sensuous, and for this reason to carry away the conviction that in a mysterious fashion soul and body had been prepared for the future reception of the immortal life. Such being the theory it was an easy step from this to combine all the mysteries into one great mystery in worship, and this was what actually took place. With this as the starting-point the “Church” too accordingly became a holy reality, the institution for worship, the holy mechanism, which supplies the believer with heavenly impressions and raises him to heaven. The idea of the Church which had the most vitality in the East was that of something which, regarded as active, was “the lawful steward of the mysteries” (“ὁ γνήσιος τῶν μυστηρίων ὀικονόμος”) and conceived of as passive, was the image of the “heavenly hierarchy.”

In strict logical fashion it developed from beginnings which already foreshadow the end. Although the beginnings are characteristically different, we find them in Antioch as well as in Alexandria and thus in both the centres of the East. In the case of the former of these cities the beginnings are to be looked for in Ignatius, the author of the Six Books of the Apostolic Constitutions, the editor of the Eight Books, and in Chrysostom, and together with them in Methodius. In the case of the latter the starting-point was supplied by Clemens, Origen, (Gregory of Nyssa) and Macarius. In the former everything from the first was intimately associated with the bishop and with worship, in the latter with the true Gnostic originally, then next with the monk. In the former the bishop is the hierurge and the representative of God, the presbyters represent the apostles, and the deacons Jesus Christ. This is the earthly hierarchy, the copy of the heavenly. Already with Ignatius the cultus dominates the entire Christian life; the holy meal is the heavenly meal, the Supper is the “medicine of immortality”—φάρμακον ἀθανασίας. By means of the one Church-worship we mount up to God; woe to him who takes no part in it. All this is put in a stronger form in the Apostolical Constitutions, and is developed in a worthy and sensible fashion in the work of Chrysostom περὶ ἱερωσύνης. But in all this the attitude of the laity is a passive one; they make no effort, they allow themselves to be filled. The influential Methodius viewed the matter from a different standpoint. Although he is the opponent of the Alexandrians, he does not deny the influence which he had received from them. His realism and traditionalism are, however, of a speculative kind. They constitute the substructure of the subjectivity of the monkish mysticism. Christ must be born “rationally” (νοητῶς) in the believer; every Christian must by participating in Christ become a Christ. Methodius knew how to unite the ideas of a powerful religious individualism with the Mysticism which attaches itself to objective traditions. While protecting these latter against the inroads of a heterodox idealism, he nevertheless intended that they should merely constitute the premises of an individual religious life which goes on between the soul and the Logos alone.

This was the fundamental thought of the great theologians of Alexandria. But they rarely connected the substructure of their theosophy with earthly worship, and still more rarely with earthly priests. Nevertheless their substructure was of a much richer kind than that of the Antiochians. There is probably no single idea connected with religion or worship, no religious form, which they did not turn to account. Sacrifice, blood, reconciliation, expiation, purification, perfection, the means of salvation, the mediators of salvation,—all these, which were connected with some symbol or other, played a rôle in their system. It was the hierarchical element alone which was kept very much in the background, nor was much prominence indeed given to the idea of the ritual unity of the Church which was a leading one with the Antiochians. Everything is directed towards the perfection of the individual, the Christian Gnostic, and everything is arranged in stages, a feature which is wanting in the system of the Antiochians. The Christian does not merely allow himself to be filled with the Holy; on the contrary he is himself here always engaged in independent effort inasmuch as he advances from secret to secret. At every stage some remain behind; each stage down to the last presents a real thing and the covering of a thing. Blessed is he who knows the thing or actual fact, still more blessed he who presses on to the next stage, but he too is saved who grasps the thing in its covering only. But with the stages of the mysteries the stages of the knowledge of the world further correspond. He who makes the mysteries his own, thinks at the same time on the progressively ordered world. He advances from the external world upwards to himself, to his soul, his spirit, to the laws of the world and the world-spirits, to the one undivided Logos who rules the universe, to the incarnate Logos, to the highest Reason, which lies behind the Logos, to what is above all reason—to God. The Cosmos, the history of redemption, the Bible are the great graduated, ordered mysteries which have to be traversed: all divine things and all human things—πάντα θεῖα καὶ πάντα ἀνθρώπινα. When we have once reached the end aimed at, all helps may be dispensed with. There is a standpoint viewed from which every symbol, every sacrament, every thing that is holy, which appears in a material covering, becomes profane, for the soul lives in the Holiest of all. “Images and symbols which set forth other things were of value so long as the truth was not present, but when the truth is present, it is necessary to do the things of the truth and not of the image or representation of it,” (αἱ εἰκόνες καὶ τὰ σύμβολα παραστατικὰ ὄντα ἑτέρων πραγμάτων καλῶς ἐγίνοντο, μέχρι μὴ παρῆν ἡ ἀλήθεια· παρούσης δὲ τῆς ἀληθείας τὰ τῆς ἀληθείας δεῖ ποιεῖν, οὐ τὰ εἰκόνος). This holds good of the aspiring theologian; it holds good also in the main of the humblest, barbarous monk. But Christianity would not be the universal religion if it did not present salvation in the symbolic form at all stages. This thought separates the ecclesiastical theosophs of Alexandria from their Neo-Platonic and Gnostic brethren. In it the universalism of Christianity finds expression, but the concession is too great. It sanctions a Christianity which is bound up with signs and formulæ, the Christianity of the “εἰκόνες”. The most sublime spiritualism, as happened in expiring antiquity, made terms with the grossest forms of the religion of the masses,—or rather, here is expiring antiquity. That it could do this is a proof that a naturalistic or polytheistic element was inherent in itself. Because it did it, it was itself stifled by the power which it tolerated. The issue reveals the initial capital blunder.

The mystical cultus of Antioch which culminates in the priest and divine service, and the philosophical mysticism of Alexandria which has ultimately in view the individual, the gnostic and the monk, already converge in Methodius and the Cappadocians; they next converge in the works of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. It was owing to Maximus Confessor that in this combination they became the power which dominates the Church.

Everything was grouped round the Lord’s Supper, and as was the case in an earlier period, it still continued to be regarded from a twofold point of view, the sacrificial and the sacramental. The mystery with which it came to be increasingly surrounded and the commemorations which took place at its celebration, preserved to the Lord’s Supper in wholly altered conditions within the world-Church which embraced the Empire, its lofty and at the same time familiar, congregational character. No rigidly doctrinal development of the Lord’s Supper followed on this. But probably the presence of changes in the conceptions formed of the Lord’s Supper both in its sacrificial and in its sacramental aspect, might be proved. These changes, however, take place throughout within the limits which were already fixed in the third century. The blend of a sublime spiritualism and a sensuous realism was already in existence in the third century. Any progress which took place could consist only in this, that religious materialism advanced further and further and forced spiritualism to retire. Its advance was, however, furthered above all by the fact that the dogma of the Incarnation was brought into connection with the Lord’s Supper. This is the most important fact connected with this development, for now the Lord’s Supper became, as it were, the intelligible exponent of the entire dogmatic system, and at the same time the hitherto vague ideas regarding the kind and nature of the body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, came to have a firmly fixed form. If previous to this Christians had never of set purpose thought of the body of the historical Christ when speaking of the body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, but of His spirit, His word, or the remembrance of His body offered up, or of something inexpressible, something glorified which passed for being His body, now the idea emerged that the material element which is potentially already the body of Christ according to Gregory of Nyssa, is by priestly consecration or more correctly, by the Holy Spirit who also overshadowed Mary, changed with the real body of Christ or else taken up into it. The Incarnation is not repeated in the Lord’s Supper, but it is continued in it in a mysterious fashion, and the dogma is practically attested in the most living and marvellous way through this mystery. The priest is here, it is true, the minister only, not the author; but in connection with such a transaction to be the servant who carries out what is done, means to be engaged in an inexpressibly lofty service which raises one even above the angels. The whole transaction, which is based on the Incarnation, is thus beyond a doubt itself the mystery of the deification (θέωσις). The connection is exceptionally close; for if the act gets its essence and its substance from the Incarnation, while the latter again has in view the deification, it is itself the real means of the deification. It is the same thought as that which had already been indicated by Ignatius when he described the holy food as the “medicine of immortality” (φάρμακον ἀθανασίας); but it is only now that this thought is taken out of the region of uncertain authority and has fixity given to it by getting a thoroughly firm foundation. But perhaps the point that is most worthy of note is, that in reference to the elements phrases were used by the Greek Fathers of a later period, which, as applied to the dogma of the Incarnation, had to be discarded as Gnostic, doketic, Apollinarian, or Eutychian and Apthartodoketic! People speak naïvely—up to the time of Johannes Damascenus, at least—of the changing, transformation, transubstantiation of the elements into the Divine. No attempt is made to form definite ideas regarding the whereabouts of their material qualities; they are wholly and entirely deified. In a word, the views held regarding the Lord’s Supper were for a long time Apollinarian-monophysite, and not dyophysite. But this makes it once more perfectly plain that what was regarded by the Greek Church as of real importance from the religious point of view, was adequately represented only by the teaching of Apollinaris and Monophysitism, and that the reasons which finally led to the adoption of Dyophysitism had no strict connection with the dogmatic system.