Letter 56

From: Ambrose, Bishop of Milan To: The bishops of northern Italy Date: ~382 AD Context: A doctrinal circular warning against the Apollinarian heresy [the teaching of Apollinaris of Laodicea that Christ had a human body but not a human mind, the divine Logos taking the place of his rational soul]. Ambrose to his brothers in the episcopate — greetings. A new error has arisen — or rather, an old one in new clothes. Apollinaris of Laodicea [a bishop and scholar who had been a champion of orthodoxy against Arianism before developing his own heretical Christology] teaches that the Lord Jesus took a human body but not a human mind. According to his doctrine, the divine Word occupied the place where a human soul would have been, so that Christ was a fusion of divine intelligence and human flesh. This sounds pious. It is not. It guts the Incarnation. If the Son of God did not assume a complete human nature — body, soul, and mind — then our complete human nature is not saved. The principle is clear: what is not assumed is not healed [this axiom, attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus, became the standard argument against Apollinarianism]. The human mind is the seat of temptation, of moral choice, of sin. If Christ had no human mind, he could not have been tempted as we are tempted (Hebrews 4:15), and his victory over temptation would be a sham — a divine being effortlessly overriding impulses he never actually felt. Moreover, if Christ had no human will, then his obedience in the Garden of Gethsemane — "Not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42) — is nonsensical. Whose will was being surrendered if there was no human will to surrender? We confess one Christ, fully God and fully man, possessing everything that belongs to God and everything that belongs to man except sin. A Christ who is less than fully human cannot save those who are fully human. Warn your people, brothers. This error is subtle and it flatters the pious imagination. But it undermines the very salvation it claims to exalt. Farewell.

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