Apollinaris the Younger (died 390) was a bishop of Laodicea in Syria. He collaborated with his father Apollinaris the Elder in reproducing the Old Testament in the form of Homeric and Pindaric poetry, and the New Testament after the fashion of Platonic dialogues, when the emperor Julian had forbidden Christians to teach the classics.
He is best known, however, as a noted opponent of Arianism, Apollinaris’s eagerness to emphasize the Godhead of Jesus and the unity of his person led him so far as to deny the existence of a rational human soul (νοῦς, nous) in Christ’s human nature, this being replaced in him by the Logos, so that his body was a glorified and spiritualized form of humanity. Over against this view the orthodox and catholic position (maintained by Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Church of the East, Oriental Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and most traditions within Protestantism) that God as his Logos assumed human nature in its entirety, including the νοῦς, for only so could he be humanity’s perfect redeemer and prototype. It was alleged that the Apollinarian approach implied docetism, that if the Godhead without constraint swayed the manhood there was no possibility of real human probation or of real advance in Christ’s manhood. The position was accordingly condemned by several synods and in particular by that of Constantinople (381).
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Author: Wikipedia
Keywords: Apollinaris, Apolinarias, Apolloniarius, Apolinarius, Apollinarian, Trinity
Bible reference(s): John 1:14
Source: This article uses material from the Wikipedia article “Apollinaris of Laodicea,” which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
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